Sanctuary

by H C Edwards

  When the lift came to a rest and the doors opened, she was met with the humming sound that seemed to flow through the walls and floors. The first time she had heard it, she thought of the purring of a large kitten, a constant rumbling that was gentle and soothing. It was, of course, the sound of the quantum computer, and no amount of insulation could drown it out.

  Misao stepped out of the lift and took a left, heading to Chamber 4, one of the original chambers. She knew this from pouring over the blueprints when she was selecting which chamber to use for the experiment. It was also the one that had seen the most maintenance, and yet still had most of its original components. She was also aware that after her failed experiment, the council had seen fit to replace the installation hoses and seals that coupled with the liquid hydrogen cooling units. It was a time consuming process and so far only half of the chambers had been refitted. Chamber 4 was one that had not.

  The curved tunnel before her continued on, but she had arrived at the necessary door, simply labeled ‘Ring Station 4’. She breathed deeply, calming her hammering heart. Her hand, when she raised it to input her security clearance code, shook with the tremors of an old palsied woman. She pulled it away and squeezed it between her other hand, massaging the fingers. It was cold down here, but only some of the tremors could be attributed to that excuse.

  This time, when she went to input the code, her hand didn’t shake. The door opened, and Misao stepped inside, pulling the pistol out from beneath her robes.

  “I am Councilwoman HIdeshi,” she intoned with all the authority she could muster, the pistol in her hand taking the lead, much to the alarm of the two techs at their monitoring stations. “And I’m going to need all of you to put your hands up and back away from your screens.”

  He tried the first door that he found, and thankfully, the room was unoccupied. Again, Trey noted how unusually empty the whole building was, and then it occurred to him that it might be for their benefit. It was possible that Talbot had cleared out the majority of the Pantheon. Such a thing wouldn’t be too difficult, and there would be fewer witnesses in case things happened to get messy. Talbot had always been a cautious one, after all.

  Trey shook off his paranoia. Whether his theory was correct or not didn’t matter. In fact, it worked in his favor, making it easier to avoid people. There was still the security cameras to think of, but he figured that Talbot hadn’t informed those monitoring them yet, preferring to rely on his cadre of loyal guards. As far as anyone knew, Trey and Griffin were in custody, Misao on the run, at least until the guards in the lobby were discovered. That could happen at any time but it would be awhile before they could be roused. Systems needed to reboot after an EMP stun.

  The office he stood in must have belonged to a low level associate, probably a synthetic, as there were no pictures or emotionally attached décor. There was only a desk and two small chairs as furniture. The walls were barren, the only anomaly in the room being a sculpture that resembled a poorly envisioned sailboat sitting on the desk next to the flip screen.

  The sailboat.

  For some reason, the sculpture gave him pause. It was an odd thing to see it sitting on the desk in the otherwise simple room. He studied it for a moment, a brief flash of recognition stirring in his memory. Whoever had made it did not recall exactly what it looked like, or if they did, their memory of it was hazy.

  Trey shook his head and made his way to the computer, powering up the flip screen, swiping and typing on the virtual keyboard that was projected on the desktop. He had performed this action before in the pursuit of criminals, but the last time had been over a hundred years ago, and even then, it required access given only by a member of the council.

  As he input Misao’s code and was given clearance, he breathed a sigh of relief. After that it was only a minute for him to find Griffin Byrne’s quantum signature. When he did, he wasn’t surprised at the man’s location.

  Trey should have expected it, but even so, he had to double check the coordinates to make certain. Not only was Griffin close, but he was very close. Just a few floors below ground, lay the only place in the Pantheon where a prisoner could be safely kept, the holding cells in the psych ward, a near abandoned section of the building that was on the opposite end of the clinic and the revival wing.

  After a moment to consider, Trey could guess why Griffin was there. The fact that the doctor was alive only meant one thing…Talbot needed him, and if he needed him, he most certainly would perform a wipe or memory alteration.

  Though their group had left the house at the same time, Griffin had a half hour’s lead on Trey and Misao. In that amount of time, Talbot could have already wiped Griffin’s current memory clean.

  Would he find the same man in that cell? Trey wasn’t certain, but he knew their only chance lay in the hope that Griffin hadn’t been through the process yet.

  It bothered him, how neat it all had been. They had been swooped up easily, their every move anticipated. How could Talbot had known? There had only been the four of them in that house. Only someone who-

  Trey’s hands froze over the keyboard.

  His last revival.

  Talbot had to guess that Trey would uncover something in Charlottesville, and he would have been especially suspicious, rightly so, when the data stream with Trey’s quantum signature was sent from the satellite. Suspicion like that warranted monitoring. It’s what he would have done.

  “Dammit!” Trey growled, fingers flying over the keyboard as he accessed the mainframe.

  He again used Misao’s code to get into the security system, scrolling through the active programs. He came to one that immediately caught his attention. It stood out because it required a frequency that hadn’t been in use for as long as his memory went back, an audio frequency.

  Trey stood up, hands frantically investigating his scalp, the base of his neck. He was just about to tear off his shirt and inspect his torso, when one of his fingers brushed the area behind his ear where every synthetic had an uplink. His hand paused. The skin there was slightly upraised, and when he scratched at it, the synthetic covering peeled readily away.

  He dug at the base of it with his fingertips, into the flesh, the tips of his nails finding purchase. Some fluid leaked out when he yanked the device free, synthetic blood that clotted almost instantly when it touched the air.

  Trey held up the object in front of his face and saw that it was emitting a tiny blinking green light. It was a crude device, near ancient but effective, undetectable by most standards because no one ever looked for such a thing anymore.

  He pinched his fingers together and crushed it into tiny pieces, watching as it crumbled apart and floated to the ground.

  Someone had been listening this whole time. It didn’t take two guesses to figure out who, and if Talbot had ears on Trey, he knew their whole plan. He just hoped the old man had stopped listening once Trey was caught, whatever Misao had planned wasn’t going to work.

  It was too late to go after her. He knew they had guards who patrolled the Ring below, but security was lax because only those techs who worked down there and the council had access. The only thing that Trey could do to help her now was make certain that he freed Griffin as quickly as possible and get the virus uploaded…and hope that Misao could handle the couple of guards down there before Talbot sent more.

  The Backup

  She struggled initially. It was the panic that set in, causing her to thrash about and lash out with her hands and feet, anything that she could free for a second or two. At one point, she even caught a guard on the chin, a hard enough blow that he stumbled back and caught himself against the wall, swearing out loud as he recovered.

  He wanted to hit her after. She could tell, but he didn’t dare.

  In the end, all her fight was for naught. They overpowered her easily and drug her to the bed, strapping her down, the guard she had struck making certain to cinch her down tight enough that she cried out in pain.

  “That’s enough!
” the tech shouted at him, and pushed the guard away from her.

  “Touch me again and they’ll be reviving two people in this room,” the guard threatened, smiling smugly when the tech stepped meekly back.

  He leaned over Claire, close enough that she could smell his foul breath.

  “Sweet dreams, Princess,” he said.

  There might have been more. The look in his eyes said he wanted something else, but at that moment there was a voice from the door of the revival room.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  The guard snapped up, his face blanching at the woman’s tone. He looked like a teenager who had been caught with his pants down.

  “Just making sure she’s fastened down,” he mumbled his excuse.

  Councilwoman Egbert was framed in the light of the doorway, a small woman, but it could have been a giant standing there.

  She strode across the room, heading straight for the guard, and before anyone could even blink, she slapped him hard across the face.

  His hand went up to cup his cheek as he averted his eyes, staring down at the floor.

  “You are a pathetic excuse for a man,” she sneered at him, and each word seemed to cow him further, shrinking him, so that he appeared like David to her Goliath.

  Councilwoman Egbert pointed to the other guard with a bony finger, and the man flinched as if he’d been struck as well.

  “You,” she said. “Place this man under arrest.”

  “Councilwoman-” the first guard began, his voice mewling like a wounded lover.

  Her hand went up again, lightening quick like a snake bite, and there was another sharp resounding slap on his other cheek.

  She glowered at him.

  “Why aren’t you placing this man under arrest?”

  The other guard jumped as if prodded with a pin and rushed over to his partner, grabbing the man by his arms and cuffing him from behind.

  “You have been found guilty of deviancy,” the councilwoman stated, as if she were reading the verdict from behind her desk. “Do you have anything to say before sentencing?”

  The man gulped and made movements with his mouth that were akin to a fish trying to breathe out of water.

  “I didn’t think so,” she said. “You are sentenced to a five year wipe and remanded into the custody of psychiatric care, to complete a two year program before being reassigned.”

  She snapped her head to the other guard, who couldn’t help but take a step back. Her eyes found his nametag.

  “You, Perkins, are on probation for the next year. Step out of line once and you’ll receive the same sentence.”

  The color drained from the guard’s face, but he had enough sense to nod.

  “Skip the processing and take him straight to the next available revival room. I will forward the order later.”

  The guard, obviously not wanting any more confrontation, immediately shoved his partner forward and marched him out. Before the two left, Claire could hear the other man start to cry.

  The councilwoman passed a hand over her eyes, and for a moment there was a brief glimpse of weariness, but it was difficult to tell for certain as it lasted less than a second.

  When she turned her gaze on Claire, her expression softened, the hard line of her lips smoothing out.

  “I am sorry for that,” she said.

  Claire didn’t say a word, not certain what kind of reaction she’d get. The panic was trying to claw its way to the surface again, and it was all she could do to keep it down.

  The tech had returned to his station, prepping the computer for what could only be the transfer.

  The councilwoman reached down to the straps and began to loosen each one, not enough for Claire to wiggle free, but enough that she didn’t have to labor to breathe.

  “Why are you here?” Claire said, finally finding her voice.

  She tried to sound defiant and bold, but it sounded desperate to her own ears.

  The councilwoman stood up and turned to the tech.

  “Give us a moment, please?”

  “Councilwoman?”

  She sighed.

  “Wait outside by the door,” she demanded, her voice brooking no further argument.

  The tech hurried out, leaving the two alone in the ambient colored light that played across the curved walls of the revival room.

  Egbert leaned over her.

  “You will be revived, Claire,” she said. “There is nothing I can do about that. You see, your grandfather has been busy these many years. He has acquired full control of the revival program, and with the help of the boys on the security floor, he has full access to all Cloud profiles. Do you know what that means?”

  Claire shook her head, not trusting her voice again.

  “It means that he can alter any profile he sees fit, and if he so chooses, delete them completely, sending them off to the Ether without any chance of recovery.”

  Claire’s eyes widened.

  Egbert nodded, a knowing smile looking hideously grim on her face.

  “You understand now,” she said. “We are prisoners ourselves. If we do not comply with his demands, it will not just be our profiles that he deletes from the Cloud, but those of our families, our children and their children.”

  “But,” Claire tried to reach for a glimmer of hope. “You are the council. You can stop him.”

  The councilwoman shook her head.

  “Your grandfather would have a contingency plan, of that we are all certain. If something were to happen to him, we would suffer…accidents…and our revival clauses either cancelled or deleted…as he did with your father.”

  Claire jerked at this revelation, her tongue catching in her throat.

  “M-m-my…father?”

  The older woman nodded again.

  “Your father uncovered Talbot’s plan for Charlottesville, and that’s why he had to be removed.”

  Claire had to close her eyes against the range of emotions that were spilling through her consciousness at that moment. She was barraged with feelings of betrayal and rage and pain, and beneath it all a deep well of grief that wanted to swallow her up like a sinkhole.

  “We had no hand in it, Claire, and that is the greatest truth I can impart upon you right here and now.”

  If Claire were free at that moment she would have leapt upon the councilwoman, would have strangled her with her bare hands, hammer at her face until it was a pulp, screaming the whole time.

  “You must listen to me,” the councilwoman appealed, perhaps sensing that she was losing her audience.

  Claire’s eyes snapped open and she lunged forward with her head. Egbert’s composed demeanor slipped as she flinched back, hands raised up.

  Claire, her teeth gritted tightly, straining against her bonds, nearly spat her words out.

  “I will kill you,” she snarled.

  The councilwoman recovered quickly, her hands smoothing her robes as if they had been wrinkled during her slight scare. The lines of her face had smoothed out, became impassive.

  “I told you, we did not have anything to do with your father’s death, but we are guilty nonetheless.”

  She approached Claire’s side once again.

  Egbert withdrew a small device from the pocket of her robes and held it up. Claire froze, eyeing it warily. She still seethed with rage and wanted nothing more than to exact some form of retribution. The simmering hate boiled in her veins, crawled like ants along her skin, but she was also very much aware of her helpless situation. She would have to wait for an opening, a moment, and she realized that it might not be in this life at all.

  “What is that?”

  The councilwoman ignored her question.

  “I love my daughter,” she said instead. “My mistakes and my choices are unforgiveable, and one day I will pay for my crimes…but my daughter should not. She is the leader we need for this world, but she cannot do it with your grandfather there.”

  Claire squinted at the councilwoman, s
ensing design at play and not just a confessional visit.

  “Talbot will die, and he has chosen his time,” Egbert continued, almost eagerly it seemed. “Once you and your friends have been quarantined, he plans on making the transition. His time is much shorter than anyone knows.”

  Claire thought of the way her grandfather’s face had drooped on one side, the result of a stroke, or perhaps a precursor to something much worse.

  “When he dies, his security access will be null and void for the short amount of time it takes for his revival, meaning that only his successor will have full control over the Cloud.”

  “Misao,” Claire said, and the anger started to slink away with the realization of what the councilwoman was planning. “You’re going to have her delete my grandfather’s profile and take his place.”

  “No,” Egbert said, shaking her head. “You are going to tell her to do it.”

  Claire turned her head slightly, riddled with suspicion, wondering what the catch was.

  “This,” the councilwoman said, nodding to the device in her hand, “is an uplink node, but unlike any other node, it will partition your Cloud profile. Your grandfather has already performed a wipe on your original profile that will be downloaded into your synthetic brain, but this uplink will replace it with the partitioned file almost immediately. You will remember everything leading up to the moment I apply the uplink.”

  “You mean after you kill me,” Claire sneered.