by JC Hay
Hope flared in Yashilla's chest, just before Amira took it away again. The structural damage Eryn has suffered increases your colleague's survival chance to 6.282%.
All that Zar had suffered would be in vain if they couldn't get the plane started and ready to take off. And if his chances were as low as the AI predicted, she needed to be thinking about herself. Despite the ache that seemed to eat a hole in her chest, she pulled out her card mimic and bypassed the door to the plane. It folded down, revealing a set of utilitarian stairs built into the interior surface. She forced herself not to look and started to climb.
"Stop," the operative—Eryn—shouted over the whipping wind and noise on the flight deck. All Zar managed was a grunt of pain, but she understood it all the same. Go.
Despite her best interest, Yashilla paused to look.
The operative had Zar on the ground. Her knees pinned his back and his human arm to the flight deck. His cyberarm had been twisted behind him at a sharp enough angle that even from a distance Yashilla could see the strain it was putting on the flesh beneath. The operative made certain that she had Yashilla's attention, then tore off Zar's arm.
It happened so quickly, Yashilla wasn't even sure she had processed what she saw. One second, the operative had him pinned and his arm trapped. The next, the operative was kneeling with the twisted wreckage of Zar's cyberarm in one hand.
And it was her fault.
With the loss of his arm, your colleague's chance of survival is—
Yashilla tugged the plug out of her skull as soon as the blue-white letters had started to appear, cutting off Amira mid-prediction.
"It doesn't have to end this way." Eryn sounded perfectly at ease. As though she hadn't been fighting for the last several minutes. As though she hadn't ripped off another person's arm, or wasn't still holding the spasming cyberlimb in one hand. She tossed Zar's arm to the deck. "I'm not interested in stopping your escape. My only goal is to secure CorpServ property."
"Meaning Amira."
"Meaning the proprietary software developed by our researchers." Eryn grabbed Zar by the back of the neck to drag him to his knees. "Allow me to propose a trade."
The sting of it compressed her fear into a tiny ball. How had Zar described it? CorpServ only bargained when they didn't have the cards they wanted. That they'd sent the operative at all meant that reclaiming Amira was a priority for them. The trade would remove the one piece of leverage she had. The one thing that kept CorpServ from shooting them out of the sky if she fled.
It didn't add up. There was another element she wasn't seeing. If it were just Amira, then all the operative needed to do was kill them both and reclaim the case. Think, Yashilla! What are you missing? She stalled for time. "I'm listening."
"We'll release Balthazar Marks. In exchange, you will surrender our proprietary software and accept a position as part of our counter-intrusion team. Your skills have highlighted an unexpected weakness in our systems."
The sour taste of bile tickled the back of Yashilla's throat. Corporate Services wanted to hire her. In a way, it made sense. She was, to her knowledge, the only person who had cracked their external networks, and now had done the same with their internal ones. The second had been largely with the help of Amira, but if CorpServ still thought of Amira as software, then they wouldn't have been recognized as assisting.
A year ago, she might have considered accepting the offer. Before CorpServ had framed one of her clients for murder. Before their attempt to murder Joshi, in an effort to save money on his retirement and prevent the end of his indenture.
She forced herself to look at Zar's face. Bloody and broken, and still the most beautiful person she knew. He was the only link back to her. The only way CorpServ would be able to find her. And CorpServ would make sure he lived in agony until he finally gave her up. But if she said yes...
They'd kill him instantly. They wouldn't risk an outside tie that could corrupt her, or take whatever he'd learned of the Bulwark's systems back to the outside world. They might even do it in front of her, to remind her how tenuous her new position was.
Zar made sure he had her gaze, then carefully mouthed the words, Go. I've got this.
Yashilla vaulted up the steps into the plane.
A heartbeat later, he surged up, using Eryn's hand on his neck to throw her off balance long enough to get to his feet. The operative delivered a punishing rebuke, but Yashilla pulled the door closed before she could see it. It would take less than a minute to patch Amira into the system. At the speed of their fight, Yashilla estimated that the operative could hit Zar forty-five times in that span. She refused to look out the window to confirm it.
Another minute for the plane to roll onto the flight deck and bring the dual turbines up to speed.
Thirty more seconds to lift off from the deck and fly out low over the water.
CorpServ wouldn't shoot them down; she had the only copy of Amira as insurance. Zar would live until he gave them enough to find her. Or he'd die holding out on them.
And she'd have to live with herself, which seemed the worst punishment of all.
Chapter Eight
Z
ar woke at the sound of the key scraping in the lock. They hadn't damaged his eyes yet, and the chrono still blazed in the corner of his vision to let him know the time. Four hours of sleep. Not bad. Impressive, if he was honest, since he'd expected them to start in with sleep deprivation right away. Exhaustion muddied the brain, made a person more pliable and open to suggestion. But without knowing what sort of endocrine systems he had in place to counteract it, that would take time. If he knew Yashilla—not a guarantee, he reminded himself—time was something CorpServ didn't have very much of.
The door opened, and two men walked into the room. With their dark suits and surgically identical faces, they may as well have carried a sign that said they were CorpServ Agents—the shot-callers who arranged jobs and protected CorpServ's mercenary interests. The third man was the outlier, dressed in a set of simple green scrubs, complete with hairnet, face mask, and paper booties on his shoes. The only thing missing was a pair of gloves, but he didn't wear them because they dulled his sense of touch.
Zar knew that fact because the man had mentioned it eight times during the nearly six hours he'd tortured Zar already.
"I'd stand to greet you, but..." Zar shrugged as well as he could. Suspended from the ceiling by his wrist, with his feet shackled far enough back that he almost couldn't gain purchase, it wasn't much of a shrug.
"Yesterday was a warm-up, Mr. Marks," the agent on the left said to start the conversation.
Zar snorted, though it came out more as a cough. The position in which he hung put pressure on his lungs, making it difficult to breathe. It had been rough, but they'd never gone twelve rounds with a cybernetic killing machine. He could take a lot of physical punishment.
Hell, he deserved it.
His companion added, "Today is about choice. You can choose to tell us where she is, or we can choose to pull you apart piece by piece, then transfer your screaming consciousness into a fresh body and start all over again."
As threats went, he'd heard better ones. Zar grinned and told them as much. "Which hurts worse? That you can't find her? Or that she told you to pound sand when you offered her a job?" His voice sounded raw and cracked, and his tongue stuck to his dry, blood-crusted mouth when he spoke. They could beat on him for days; he had no idea where Yashilla might have run to. Where she might be hiding. The more time they spent trying to find out what he didn't know, the better hidden she'd be when they got around to looking for her.
The torturer stepped forward at a signal from the agent on the left. Zar allowed himself a few moments to fantasize about how he'd kill the man, tried to steel himself against what was coming.
Pain lanced across his chest and down his spine, forcing his back into a painful arc that collapsed the breath from his lungs. His tormentor stepped back into view. "Interesting downside of cybernetic limb replacem
ent—there are feedback loops all along the surviving nerves. They are...extremely sensitive."
Nothing they did to him would be as bad as the pain he carried already. At least Yashilla had been strong enough to walk away, had seen the obvious trap in what they had offered her. He'd protect her as long as would be required. And then he wouldn't be able to hurt her anymore.
The look he'd seen on her face, when he'd accused her of being complicit in the attack to line her own coffers, was worse than anything CorpServ could dish out.
The two agents filed back out the door as a medical technician wheeled in a cart filled with shiny surgical tools. They rattled quietly as the cart cut across the grout lines in the tile. The torturer looked over the array, and if he'd been amused or excited, Zar might have been less scared. Instead the man's eyes had no emotion whatsoever. He could just as easily have been picking out shoelaces, rather than determining the best way to inflict pain on another person.
The left-hand agent stuck his head back in the room, voice pleasant as he called out, "We'll be back in a few hours. Until then, think about our offer. About how this might all stop."
The med-tech handed off a long, narrow chisel, and the interrogator stepped forward as the door to Zar's cell closed once again.
You should not punish yourself. You made the best available choice to ensure your survival.
Yashilla looked at the monitor she'd set up. Wired to the interfaces in the protein memory unit, it allowed Amira to communicate without getting on the public 'Net. She suspected that Corporate Services would be looking for telltale markers in their code, and would kick in the hotel door five minutes after they'd started to upload. It's what she'd be doing in their shoes.
Plus, she suddenly wasn't certain it was the best idea to provide the AI with unfettered access to the whole of the world.
Yashilla took down a manual keyboard and balanced it on her chest as she reclined on the bed. You seem to know a lot about the human condition, for a machine.
The cursor blinked twice before the whole sentence appeared, the AI no longer making the effort to fake human typing. I understand probability. And survival. Given the circumstances, you have a 97.3% chance of suffering some form of survivor's guilt.
Zar's not dead! She fought against saying it out loud. The AI wouldn't have heard her anyway. At the moment, their only inputs were through the keyboard. Even thinking the phrase, though, she knew she was right. Corporate Services needed him alive, because he was the only person who could find her. Or at least that's what they would think. They'd have no way to know that she and Zar had only met before the run. That she had known him for less than two weeks.
And he'd given himself over to the enemy for her. Sacrificed himself so she could escape, even if he didn't believe that Amira was conscious.
The quiet of the room didn't help either. It left her alone with her thoughts, to digest the ache for Zar's company like the itch of a phantom limb. They'd talked on the ship, not just big things, but stupid small talk and jokes that filled the space with smiles. Amira could provide simple advice but was rubbish at conversation. They shared nothing about themselves without prompting.
Yashilla tapped out a question on the keyboard. What made the difference?
After a pause the answer appeared. I don't understand the question.
Plenty of researchers have toyed with artificial sentience for the last century. Why are you different?
Another pause, this one longer. Why am I a success where the other attempts failed? This question is difficult.
"Welcome to life. No easy questions." Yashilla took a long hit from the inhaler she'd procured. MeltCap wasn't great, as drugs went, but it did take the edge off. On the run, she'd take whatever solace she could get. And wish it were Zar instead. With him at her side, she hadn't been scared for the first time since...
The first time since her parents had died.
Additional words began to scroll up the monitor. Memory is essentially a protein state. As such, it can be recorded. A client corporation—Zaahir Amalgamated Technologies—had experimented with the possibility of recording and restoration of memories. Personality is rooted in memory.
The thought sent a chill to pool in Yashilla's stomach that consumed most of the MeltCap's easy warmth. There were too many ways to abuse that technology. Once you could record memories, you could rewrite them. And once you could manage that, then it was a short step to implanting memories. Or commands.
Amira continued. There were three total test recordings. Two using researchers, and one using the current CEO.
She typed back a quick response. Why would the CEO agree to the procedure?
There is a significant likelihood that she saw it as a gateway to immortality.
Something tickled the back of Yashilla's mind. She sorted back through hacks she'd sold, looking for the source of irritation. It didn't take long to find. One of her best clients, a thief named Elise, had been framed for murder after taking a CorpServ job that went pear-shaped. Sure enough, it had been a run against Zaahir. She picked the keyboard back up. There's a big jump I'm missing. What happened?
Corporate Services acquired copies of all three test recordings. Machine analysis was performed to identify similarities in patterns that might indicate sentience. The cursor blinked after the punctuation, indicating more to follow. Those patterns were difficult to replicate, so were simply hybridized into my existing systems.
"Clever." Yashilla said it aloud, then leaned forward and typed it out so the AI could see it. Your creators were inventive.
They were desperate to provide results. They implemented a shortcut that provided the maximum likelihood of success.
Yashilla smirked. They must have been proud, all the same.
Pride is irrelevant. They were afraid of my potential and limited it by restricting my access to the Bulwark and hardened sites within the closed network. I entertained myself by rerunning simulations of the best places to locate secondary sites.
Yashilla blinked and stared at the words on the screen. Read them a second time. You know where CorpServ maintains their secondary sites? All of them?
The cursor blinked, then the answer appeared. The purpose of your question is to identify if I am aware of the location where your colleague is being held. With sufficient information, I can predict it with 98.37% accuracy.
She sat up, balanced the keyboard atop her crossed legs. What do you need to get that prediction to 100%?
I cannot. Absolute surety is impossible.
Fine, close as you can get. Yashilla rolled her eyes. How long?
I would need access to the 'Net, but you appear loathe to release me into the wild, so instead I require access to the following pieces of data. A list scrolled across the screen faster than Yashilla could track. If she had thought Amira capable of it, Yashilla would have accused the AI of being deliberately belligerent.
Maybe they'd picked up human nature from those recordings after all.
That didn't mean she trusted them. She literally had no way to understand what Amira might be thinking. Analyzing. Whatever word could be used to describe how they arrived at their decisions. But...
She closed her eyes, and the memory of Zar's dismemberment replayed against the dark canvas. Releasing Amira into the wild would eliminate her ability to leverage their brilliance to make a fortune. Hell, with the pervasiveness of the 'Net, it would make Amira a god in their own right—as omnipresent and immortal as the 'Net itself.
Would Zar be worth the loss? He'd be well within his rights to walk off as soon as he was free.
The hooks that dug into her stomach at the thought of him leaving were dulled some by knowing that he'd be okay. That he'd have the choice to walk away. She typed in a quick question. How hard is it to attack one of these substations?
Extremely. Unlike the Bulwark, they are well defended against a frontal assault. Yashilla's blood chilled at the stark assessment, as additional words started to form. However, much
like the Bulwark, they are very susceptible to infiltration and extraction. I predict this is the question you wanted to ask.
She couldn't do it by herself. Yashilla ran her fingers through her hair. She'd have to have backup if she wanted to have any success at all. Her fingers dropped back to the keyboard. Are you willing to help me plan that?
The screen sat blank for several seconds before the answer came back. Your question suggests that you believe I have some loyalty to my former captors. I do not. However, help implies a sense of altruism, or the unspoken expectation of future reciprocation. I would be willing to help you in exchange for my own freedom.
Yashilla carried the protein unit over to the hotel room's pressboard desk and opened up her tool kit. It took less than a minute to reinstall the 'Net receiver into the slot she'd removed it from. Another five to set a VPN to bounce her signal across five continents and three dozen cities. CorpServ might trace it eventually, but it would take them time.
Nothing happened.
Yashilla reached out and reset one of the jumper switches, and the green transmit and receive lights started flashing rapidly.
In spite of herself, Yashilla held her breath. There was nothing to make Amira keep their promise. After a minute, the screen lit back up. I have begun the process of copying myself to a secure location so that I am preserved. When that is complete, I will need time to process data and identify the location and the best way to infiltrate it.
She picked up the keyboard. How long do you need?
There is a lot of data. Eighteen to twenty hours.
Yashilla nodded. She'd need a small army to do the job right. Lucky for her, she knew where to find one. What had the AI said? Help implied the expectation of future reciprocation. She'd helped a lot of people over the years. She smiled as her fingers tapped on the keyboard. Sounds fair. In the meantime, I need to call in a few favors.