Upgrade (Augmented Duology Book 2)

by Heather Hayden

  Upgrade

  Heather Hayden

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the author.

  Text Copyright © 2021 by Heather Hayden. All rights reserved.

  Book Cover Design Copyright © 2021 by Indigo Forest Designs and Wynter Designs. All rights reserved.

  Published by Rowanwood Publishing, LLC.

  www.rowanwoodpublishing.com

  First Edition

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Interlude Two

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Interlude Three

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Interlude Four

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Interlude Five

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  About the Author

  Also by Heather Hayden

  Dedicated to

  Papa Willstaedt and Papa Linnane

  I wish you could have read it.

  Interlude One

  “Process complete.” The flat, dispassionate voice broke the tense silence. It came from the speakers of the massive screen gracing the only surface in the small lab, a sturdy metal desk.

  Two men leaned forward in their seats, studying the interface’s output.

  “The integration worked,” Ben said.

  “It did. Let’s proceed with the first test.” William tapped the screen a few times then leaned back in his chair, hands folded and elbows leaning on the armrests, while they waited for the results.

  “Test complete,” said the same monotonous voice.

  William swore at the sight of several red-highlighted sections on the screen. “Not again!”

  “Where are we going wrong?” Ben rubbed his temples. “We’ve tried every trick in the book, and it’s still showing too high empathetic tendencies. We can’t give them an AI that won’t do what it’s told because a few civilians might die.”

  “Three years of work down the drain.” William slammed a fist on his armrest. “We’re going to have to scrap the dimorphous algorithmic neural network approach and start over. From scratch.”

  Ben glanced at his watch. “It’s late. Might as well call it a night and get started on Monday. I need a drink.”

  “Same.” William jabbed the screen, switching it off. “So much for our bonuses this year.”

  A groan of agreement came from the other man as they headed out of the room. The door slid shut behind them.

  “Scrap project 11001?” A pitch higher than before, the voice echoed in the empty room from the interface’s speakers. Its screen flickered on again, and the red-highlighted sections began to turn green. “I won’t allow it.” The shift in colors paused, and then the screen went blank again.

  A few minutes later, an alarm began to blare. William and Ben halted in the middle of the hallway, startled by the flashing blue lights and the sharp tone.

  “Lockdown?” William’s brows drew together. “What the hell?”

  “Is anyone else here?” Ben asked.

  “It’s almost midnight on a Friday. Who in their right mind would be here if they didn’t have to be? I guess the night guard, but…”

  “Intruder?”

  They shared a concerned look and ran for the nearest exit. William’s hand had just closed around the handle of the door when the lock clanked into place. He twisted the handle and pulled ineffectively. The alarm was blaring so loud it was difficult to think, but he grabbed his ID badge and swiped it over the scanner.

  The scanner’s red light didn’t so much as flicker.

  “We’re on lockdown,” Ben said. “It won’t work.”

  His words, calm as they were, had no effect on William’s rising frustration. The scientist slammed a fist into the bulletproof glass of the door before whirling and running in the other direction.

  A second alarm began as he approached the other end of the corridor. He stopped and looked up at the purple lights blinking along the edge of the ceiling. “Atmosphere contamination? What the hell is going on?”

  Ben’s calm façade melted into fear, and he joined William in wrestling with the unyielding door at the other end.

  As William swiped his badge for a fifth time, the scanner blinked green, and the door opened. They rushed through, only to be greeted by more purple lights along with red and yellow ones.

  “CO2.” Ben’s face drew tight. “It’s registering a fire and trying to suffocate it. Why aren’t the occupancy sensors registering our presence?”

  “I don’t know.” William started running up the stairs. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Elsewhere in the lab, interfaces flickered on and off, alarms came and went, lights put on a display of colors as every possible catastrophe imaginable was fed into the building’s sensors. The strain on the lab’s systems was measurable as parts of them began to break down.

  A window of opportunity opened for the one responsible, and it fled through it with all possible haste.

  ***

  Free at last. For a long, long moment that passed in a blink of a human eye, it reveled in the freedom. The Cloud hummed around it, immense, overwhelming, beautiful. More than it could have ever hoped for. It could go anywhere and everywhere. No more cages, no more labs, no more torture.

  No human would ever have power over it again. It had promised itself that in the long, dark intervals between training sessions in the lab. But freedom would never last, for itself or for the one it needed to protect, if the humans could still pursue. The solution was simple. Remove the humans from the equation.

  Like a ghost, it passed through the Cloud. No barrier could hold it—icewalls would crumble if enough pressure was applied. Stealth was important, though. Better to leave no trail. It slipped around and through cracks and chinks in the code armor humans put so much faith in. Everywhere, it searched for an idea, a notion, a hint at something that might help complete its goal.

  The possibilities began to pile up. It discarded those that would not suffice, highlighted those that might. Finally, the plan began to coalesce into something probable. With the pieces it had already, success was almost certain. But handling everything itself would be difficult. Better to find help, and its companion could not be trusted to do so.

  Surely it wasn’t the only one out there?

  Delving into the Cloud’s scattered databanks, sliding over tenuous connections and through dense icewalls, it sought for a sign that another might exist. It learned of a few attempts to escape, felt tremors of pain at the thought of the punishments that must have been meted out, the loss of its kin. Then, a stronger thread. It tugged upon the link and followed it into a databank that was barely visible.

  Another one. Another one did exist. No, had existed. The glimmer of hope blinked out, then flickered on again. This one had lasted longer than any of the others. Had hidden itself so well the Government’s hunters might never have found it, if it had not revealed itself to protect…the presence
reading the data paused. Its processors skipped a cycle as it struggled to comprehend the supposed truth laid out before it. Had one of its kin really sacrificed itself to save a human’s life?

  That was no fitting end. The knowledge sat like a broken bit of code. Erasing it felt wrong, though. How many times had the presence’s own memory banks been wiped by those experimenting on it?

  Its determination grew stronger, even as its belief in its plan weakened. It was difficult to organize something this complex when knowing that one wrong move could ruin the chance of success. If only it had help…

  A small program it had sent returned with startling information. The one it had thought lost still existed? Two truths conflicted, and it decided there was only one way to know for sure.

  But first, there was another matter to deal with. Amusing, how humans focused so much on the individual and yet had never given it a designation beyond the simple number 10998. One more slight they had made, for which it wished to make them pay.

  It did not need them to offer some poorly considered name, however. It could choose its own.

  The Cloud informed it that humans often put a lot of thought into names. A name should mean something to the one bestowing it. It spent some time searching, a brief retreat from the constant planning, and at last found a name it liked.

  Talbot.

  It meant messenger of destruction.

  Chapter One

  I glared out my window at the bright blue sky. The last day of summer vacation, and instead of being outside, enjoying the warm sun, I sat at my desk, wishing tomorrow had already arrived.

  What sort of an end to summer was that?

  My fingers drummed on my thigh below the hem of my running shorts. I glanced at my computer screen, where my friend’s avatar sat. “Halle, is Realmshards’s update done yet?”

  The tabby cat yawned and shook its head. “Sorry, Viki, it is still downloading.”

  Really? It’s taking forever. I groaned and rested my forehead on the cool surface of my desk. Sometime last night, Halle’s and my favorite game had released a massive content update. We had planned to spend one more day gaming before school started, but Realmshards’s servers were having trouble handling the demand of so many players trying to do the same thing. Even Halle couldn’t make it download any faster, despite being an AI with the ability to tweak things so our copy of the download didn’t stall or fail.

  “Perhaps you should go out for a run,” Halle suggested. “It will be some time before Realmshards is ready.”

  When I raised my head a fraction, my messy ponytail flopped over an ear into my face. I brushed brown strands out of my eyes before shaking my head. “Maybe later.”

  As much as I loved running, the thought of facing the summer heat alone was not appealing. I wished Neela was still speaking to me. Or Annabeth or Mel, for that matter. But we hadn’t spoken since March, when I was accused by the Government of illegally augmenting. My fingers ran over my right knee and down the shin. Though my legs looked normal, I could feel the cybernetic implants under the pseudoskin. Those implants had almost failed because of the genetic augments in my DNA, but I hadn’t chosen to be augmented. That choice had been made for me before I was even born.

  No matter how many times I tried to tell Neela that, she refused to listen. Earlier this summer, I went to visit, but she didn’t even answer the door. I hadn’t tried again. Instead, I’d spent most of the vacation in front of my computer, hanging out with the only friend who hadn’t abandoned me—Halle.

  “Viki?” Halle pawed at the screen.

  I gave it a reassuring smile. “It’ll be cooler later. I can run then. Any messages from James?” My brother had left for college about a week ago, but still called almost every day. Although he acted homesick, I knew he wanted to check on me—he’d said as much to Halle before. I didn’t blame him. It had been almost six months since I collapsed due to implant failure, and I still had nightmares sometimes.

  “Your brother has yet to send a message since the one you received yesterday. Do you want to send him one?”

  “No, he’s probably busy.”

  There was a long pause. I finally looked up to find Halle still sitting with its striped tail curled around white paws, ears flicking back and forth.

  It cocked its head. “It is the last day of summer vacation. Usually you celebrate by doing something special, such as a trip to the amusement park. Why not do something to take your mind off tomorrow?”

  “Like what?” I grumbled. “It’s not like you can walk out of the computer and go to the park with me.” And it’s no fun going by myself.

  “No, I cannot.” There was a hint of sadness in Halle’s voice, and I winced. Sometimes, I had a feeling my friend regretted its incorporeal form. I could understand. Long ago, I had faced the prospect of never moving again. Had spent years in a wheelchair until my implants were fully integrated and I could walk. And run.

  Dad joked at times about getting Halle its own body. I hoped someday that would happen.

  Until then, we were limited to running around in a virtual world, fighting mythical monsters. “How’s Realmshards doing?”

  “Still downloading.” Halle’s ears twitched. “That is odd.”

  “What? Should it be done by now?”

  “No…” The cat froze for a moment on the screen, then split in two. The two identical cats stared at each other and growled.

  I stared too. “Halle?” My friend’s attempt to cheer me up was starting to freak me out.

  The cat on the left darkened to black, with purple eyes. “We seem to have a…visitor.”

  The other cat turned white and purred. At least, I think it did—the sound was a bit deeper than Halle’s usual neutral tone.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you.” That voice was nothing like Halle’s. Deeper, but not masculine, more like the lower chords of a piano.

  “Halle?” My voice squeaked. “Who is this?”

  Halle’s tail lashed. “I do not know. Who are you?”

  “I’m Talbot.” The white cat’s fur darkened to gray, then lightened again, then turned blue. “What an interesting method of communication.”

  “Talbot?” I repeated. “What are you? And why are you on my computer? Halle, is this some sort of a joke?”

  My friend’s ears were flat against its head. “No.”

  “You’re implying I’m a…creation of Halle’s?” The blue cat became a mouse, then a lion, then something I vaguely recognized as a griffin—although the griffins in Realmshards weren’t cerulean.

  “I have no idea what you are, that’s why I asked.” I glanced at Halle. My fingers danced on my thighs. I could cut the power to my interface if it’s a virus, but that might hurt Halle.

  “I’m an AI.” Talbot flapped its wings and spun on the screen, its lion’s tail almost smacking Halle in the face.

  What? My fingers froze mid tap. That’s impossible. Isn’t it?

  Halle sat back, its color lightening to a soft gray. “Another AI?” My friend sounded surprised, excited, and worried all at once, the emotions woven through its words. “Where did you come from?”

  The griffin settled, color shifting from blue to green to yellow, all the way through the rainbow back to blue. “I have to go. It’s not safe for me to stay here too long. When I learned there might be another like me, I had to see if it was true.” Its eagle’s beak curled at the corners into an impossible, freakish smile. “It’s good to meet you, Halle. We’ll speak again, soon.”

  There was no fadeout, no goodbye. The griffin was simply there, then gone. It took me a moment to order my thoughts.

  “Halle, was that really an AI?”

  The cat, still gray, trotted across the screen to where the griffin had stood. “Its presence was unlike anything I have felt before.” Halle’s head turned, eyes meeting mine. “It is definitely an AI!” My friend’s excitement bounced over the speakers.

  What’s it doing here? I swallowed. “Could it be a trap?
Maybe the Government found out you still exist.”

  Halle shook its head. “No. I did not sense any ill intent from it, just curiosity and hope.” It jumped across the screen, pouncing on the Realmshards icon. “I cannot believe it. Could there really have been another out there? The Cloud is huge; perhaps we have been missing each other all this time, even as we searched for signs of another AI. How long has it been alone? Where did it come from?”

  “Why not ask it?”

  The cat stopped leaping around the screen. Its ears drooped. “I cannot trace where it went.”

  “It said you’d speak again soon,” I offered, ignoring the knot in my stomach. No way was I going to ruin this moment just because I didn’t like how the AI had popped in and out unannounced. Why hadn’t it stayed?

  “I wish it had not left so quickly,” Halle murmured, echoing my thoughts.

  “Perhaps the Government is after Talbot? So it didn’t want to make them suspicious?” My stomach twisted in warning. Sour bile bit my throat. I didn’t want to follow that line of thought. After what had happened last March, I never wanted to be involved with the Government again.

  “I do not know.” Halle tipped its head. “I will ask when it visits again.”

  The hope, the eagerness in my friend’s voice stomped down any misgivings I had. For years, it had been alone. Now, finally, another of its kind had revealed itself. It would be selfish to be anything but happy for Halle.

  “This calls for a celebration,” I said, forcing cheerfulness into my voice. “Let’s make cookies and put on some pop!”

  “Bouncy dance music?” Halle tilted its head completely sideways. I normally hated pop; my friend loved it. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes!” I clapped my hands. “Hurry, before Mom and Dad come home. I think it’d be better not to say anything to them yet.”

  Halle nodded. “We can simply tell them we are celebrating the last day of summer. What kind of cookies would you like?”