“Scan these things,” I yell as I roll hard over.
Scanning.
I don’t have a ton of room to maneuver and I certainly don’t want to take the fight out on the streets. All I need would be for the ‘Sons of Liberty’ to show up and then I would have to explain why I was in Massachusetts trespassing on private property. It might be unavoidable though, each time the ‘bots miss they vaporize another section of the wall.
I fire another particle beam, cutting off the non-plasma arm of a bot. It doesn’t seem to notice but I can tell they are engaging in defensive routines. Their speed is picking up. I snap fire my secondary beam and the particles slices through the wall and I pray I didn’t just cut someone in half.
“Okay, no more range weapons and let’s assume they’re immune to the IP cannons.”
I reach over my shoulder and grasp the hilt of my sword. The blade comes free as I dive down toward another. The plasma guns have a six-second recharge window and they seem to explode on whatever solid item they hit first. Keeping the bot in front of me, in the same line as the others, allows me to land for a second and engage with my blade… assuming they won’t kill each other.
I step forward and swing my sword up from the side. The diamond-coated blade cuts cleanly through the ‘bots chest cavity, revealing the internal workings. A mix of fluids, gel packs, and optic circuitry. Whatever these things are they’re advanced.
With their compatriot disabled the other two open fire. I grab the top half of the ‘bot I just slaughtered and toss it at the looming balls of plasma. The ‘bot is vaporized along with the plasma stream.
Move!
I count in my head as I run toward the first one. I get to three when I cut off its arm, spin and lop off the head unit. I don’t know if I will ever build a robot, but I won’t make it look human, too easy to destroy.
One.
“Full burn!”
The suit leaps into the air just as the ball of plasma vaporizes the space I cleared.
“Ramming speed!”
We swoop down, scraping the concrete as the suit crashes into the last robot at a hundred miles an hour. The human hand reaches for my head and pushes me back with surprising strength.
“Kinetic lance,” I yell as I push the thing down into the ground.
The hand explodes from the impact of kinetic energy. We slide to a halt as the bot struggles to line up its cannon. I manage to stand, put a foot on the plasma arm and ram the sword down the center of its chest. The thing dies slowly and powers down.
“Epic, where the heck did they come from?
Scanning. While it is impossible to detect quantum teleportation I can say with ninety percent accuracy it was used from somewhere below.
“Based on the Portland base, how far down?”
Clever. Calculating.
While Epic calculates I use my eyes to flip through the screens on my HUD. As I thought, the fight drew attention and the Sons of Liberty are on the way.
The Portland base is seventy-five feet below the surface. The building on top of the base is a maintenance facility housing parts and equipment.
“Okay, reroute power to the particle beams. You’re going to need at least two point one megawatts to each, can we do that?”
That exceeds the maximum power the particle beams were designed for… I don’t advise it.
“No risk, no reward. This is my parents, Epic. If we don’t succeed today we will never find them.”
Power rerouted.
Based on the Portland base I move to the center of the warehouse. With my legs shoulder width apart, I point my arms straight down.
“Here we go.”
I flex my arms, firing off the beams. The heat level in the suit immediately spikes. Normally the beams are active for a maximum of three seconds. The power capacitors and heat exchangers are designed around brief spikes of heat. Even when I added the second beam on my other arm I didn’t think about using them as a cutting tool.
Eight seconds pass. Epic puts the local news and police band on the HUD. They are only seconds away.
The hyper-accelerated silica particles burn through the floor vaporizing concrete as they stab down. I’m hoping there will be an air pressure—
Penetration. Fifty feet down, rotate at a rate of ten degrees every six seconds.
Epic draws the pattern over my HUD so I can see exactly how I need to turn. I manage to spin in a circle at almost the right rate. The floor begins to glow red as the concrete heats up. The temperature master alarm flips into pre-warning mode and my HUD flashes a bright orange, letting me know the external temp is reaching dangerous levels.
Three-thousand degrees is the max the suit can take. With the way titanium and tungsten interacts, there is no give. Two thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine, I’m fine, three thousand and the suit melts. I’ve got the master alarm setup to warn me in five hundred degree increments. At twenty-five hundred the suit screams at me.
Ten more seconds.
We can’t make it, I was hoping to burn a hole through the ceiling but the heat level is climbing too fast and the Boston PD is almost here.
“Epic, change of plans,” I shut down the particle beams with a hundred degrees to spare. “Scan the building for network cables…”
Northwest corner.
I kick in the thrusters and we’re there in a second. I punch a hole in the metal box and rip off the door. Inside, there are about a hundred cables. I press my hands up to the master switch. Normally I have Epic break into a wireless network. However, when that isn’t possible he can interact with the magnetic field of wires if there’s physical contact. “Epic, scan their network for the quantum teleporter and get us in there!” I can hear sirens now, along with the approaching whine of hoverbikes.
I’m in. Hacking. Their security protocols are incredibly advanced. Five seconds.
“Smoke!”
Two compressed canisters of potassium chlorate and aluminum coated fiberglass explode outward from each hip, spewing purple smoke behind me. The room quickly fills with the obscuring screen. I’m gonna have to scrub the suit when I get home, that stuff doesn’t come out easy.
System secured, activating quantum teleportation. Hold on to your lunch.
The world goes wonky. My vision bends as the wall in front of me vanishes and I am standing in a room with six circular pads. I drop to one knee and almost have to open the faceplate to vomit. I manage to choke it down with a few gasping breaths.
“Why was—” I gulp a few times, “Why was that so disorienting?”
Unknown.
“You’re helpful.”
I believe you mispronounced, “Thank you Epic for saving me.”
“Everyone’s a critic,” I say as I stand… I don’t believe it.
“Epic is this a… a transporter room?”
Yes.
There are six white pads on the floor in a circle and a console not ten feet away with the controls for the quantum teleporter. If I didn’t know better I would think I walked onto the set of a Star Trek movie.
“Okay, full active sensors. There’s no hiding our presence and I want to be ready.”
He doesn’t answer but I see the response on the HUD as every bit of ECM we have goes live. The door slides open and two men rush in, they’re wearing technician’s coats and carrying laptops. They freeze when they see me.
I don’t. IP cannons sing their sandpaper staccato, filling the techs with ionic energy and leaving them spazzing on the ground. Okay, now I smile.
“Let’s find my parents.”
42
The base isn’t nearly as big as Portland, no five-star restaurant, entertainment room, or other amenities.
So far I’ve found a barebone barracks with incredibly spartan arrangements, a few apartments and a cafeteria that looks like prison food would be a step up. We’ve run into at least twenty people, all technicians, no guards, and I’ve stunned them all.
“You get through their wireless firewall
yet?”
It is incredibly advanced and the coding is dense. The algorithm I’m building to break it will take time. Amelia, whoever designed this understands how AIs work. I wouldn’t be surprised if we encounter one in the near future.
Awesome. How do I design defensive protocols against AIs? The advantage Epic has over traditional firewalls in incalculable. There isn’t a network in the world he can’t access given enough time. The only trade-off is staying undetected or not.
“Epic make a note on this. We’re going to have to put in some serious brain trust time, maybe Mom can help? Her notes were what I used to finish you.”
Take the next right.
“You’re in?”
Negative. Audio sensors detect the sound of shredding paper.
I hear it now. The double doors are marked restricted. Psh. The IP cannon makes short work of them, blowing the right door off its hinges and leaving it hanging awkwardly. I kick it aside as I step through. It is a lab alright. A dozen people are in here and from the looks of it, they’re busy wiping hard drives and shredding documents.
I stun the two nearest ones and pass their twitching bodies.
“Special delivery, one angry daughter missing her parents…”
Very Funny, Epic says.
I thought so. My head bounces as a pipe clangs off my helmet.
“Seriously?” I say aloud.
I send a tech sprawling with a blast from a cannon.
“Would John and Hope Lockheart please come forward, I’m here to rescue you,” I say with a grin. One of the remaining nine has to be them but they all have their backs to me… and it has been so long that…
He turns around.
Dad.
I want to run to him and hug him but they don’t know who I am. Now, where’s…
She’s right next to him. They’re older than I remember, fourteen years is a long time. He’s almost forty-three now and she’s thirty-eight. He still has the same round nose I remember. His once brown hair is speckled with gray.
Mom’s raven black hair is shorter than I remember, but it’s my mom. I’ll never forget their faces. All of a sudden I am six years old again, riding in the back of the car.
“That’s us. Please don’t hurt anyone else,” he says.
“I’m not here to hurt anyone, I’m here to rescue you!”
They look at each other and I see confusion in their expressions.
“Rescue us? What kind of trick is this? We work here, we’re not—”
I don’t know what’s going on but I have to show them.
“Retract faceplate.”
The silver opaque shield over my face retracts, “Mom, Dad, it’s me, Amelia,” I walk forward and he grabs Mom by the waist and pulls her tight.
I stop. They're not emaciated but not healthy either. In fact, no one I’ve seen so far could be accused of being well fed. My vision narrows at the abuse they must have suffered.
“I— I don’t know who you are but please don’t hurt my wife.”
Don’t know… my heart pounds and I can’t breathe. How do they not know who I am?
“I’m your daughter. It’s me, Amelia, your daughter. I’ve been searching for you for fourteen years! How do you not know me?”
He shakes his head and they both are looking at me like I’m crazy, “We never had children. I’m sorry you must be confused. Can you please go and leave us alone? We are doing important work here.”
“Important work? Category Seven kidnapped you, stole you from my life. Epic,” I don’t bother with lowering the faceplate. “Electromagnetic pulse, full power.”
A whine emits from the suit as the capacitor builds up. This is something I’ve worked on for a while. Whatever is going on here, I am going to destroy this whole lab and leave Cat-7 with nothing.
“Faceplate down.” It slides shut. “I don’t know why you can’t remember me, but you’re coming with me. I’m really sorry about this.”
“Sorry about—”
“Wide angle IP cannons, fire.” I raise my hands and stun everyone in the lab at once. They lose power when I use such a wide angle, but for normal humans, it doesn’t make a difference. My parents fall down, twitching but still holding each other. I know that being six when they were taken doesn’t leave me with a lot of memories of them, but I remember how much they loved each other. This is them, but how do I get us out?
EMP at the ready.
“Have you broken their wireless yet?”
Their firewall is down, I’m in.
“How much data on their network?”
Hundreds of terabytes. It would take me a day to scan through it all let alone download it.
Dammit, I was hoping to take some files with me, but I would rather destroy it all then let Cat-7 keep it.
“Deploy Shai-Hulud, let me know when he’s entrenched.”
Deploying. Ten seconds for network saturation.
“Have they disconnected the communications net yet?”
Negative. Our intrusion is localized only but it will not remain so for long. Once they know we’re here they will send reinforcements. I have confirmation of Shai-Hulud’s spread to the next hub.
Excellent. The worm will work its way through Cat-7 and the longer they go without detecting it the more information I’ll have. When I tapped into their corporate network I did something similar. But this isn’t their official network, this is something else entirely.
“What the hell are they working on here?”
I believe this is the origination of the plasma gun technology and the quantum teleporter.
“Figures. Okay, time to go. Fire the EMP!”
I brace myself, I haven’t exactly tested this yet. Theoretically, the suits shielding will hold. We came up with the idea after we fought the Creature. I doubled the shielding in the MKII for this very reason. One thumbnail sized ZPFM ejects from a compartment in my shoulders and explodes. The heat energy is minimal but the EMP is powerful and instant. My HUD dims as the pulse bursts every circuit, battery, hard drive and wipes any information kept on a magnetic or electronic media. The lights shatter and we’re cast into darkness.
My HUD refreshes with an overlay of green night vision as well as thermographic. I can see heat sources hotter than ambient air which means people stick out like a sore thumb. I hadn’t counted on them being unwilling participants in their own rescue. Think, Amelia, think!
Multiple quantum teleportation signals are blooming around the base.
“Reinforcements?”
I don’t think so…
Several rapid pops and half the scientists in the room are gone. Oh no. Evacuation.
“Open comms to Kate, now Epic!”
I run over and scoop my parents up in my arms.
“Amelia?” Kate’s groggy voice sounds in my ear.
“Kate, I need you right frigging now!”
Kate Petrenelli is my best friend for a reason. Before the sound is even done echoing in my helmet, she’s here. Dressed in a modest pink nightie and slippers, she appears next to me.
“Arsenal, what the hell is going—”
“My parents, Domino, these are my parents. No time to explain, port them to my lab!”
Her eyes narrow but she doesn’t say anything else. She touches my mom and the two of them vanish.
“Epic, as soon as we’re back, full spectrum jamming on the lab. There’s got to be a way to block the signal they’re using to lock onto them.”
Affirmative.
She’s back with a pop, leaning over she takes my father and vanishes.
I watch as the last of the people in the room disappear like Kate. Is that how she does it? Is her teleportation quantum-based? I briefly wonder if they came up with their advanced tech by studying supers. They certainly have the access.
With a pop of displaced air, Kate is back. She puts her hands on my shoulders and—
We’re in my lab.
“Full spectrum ECM now!”
Engaged.
>
“Okay Amelia,” Kate says standing next to me in her nightie with sweat beading on her brow from the rapid teleports, “You want to tell me what the hell is going on?” Kate asks. Hands balled into fists on her hips and she looks none too happy.
43
It turns out Cat-7 uses a subdermal tracking implant to keep tabs on its people. Once the ECM was on they couldn’t lock onto the implant. It survived the EMP because it’s a radioactive marker, low-level enough it wouldn’t harm my parents, but strong enough that Cat-7’s sensors could pick up on it. Once the full jamming suite activated in my lab Mom and Dad were safe. The first thing we did was neutralize the tracker with a proton beam.
Currently, Mom and Dad are sleeping in an empathy-induced rest while I explain to Kate what’s happened.
She isn’t happy with me.
Wheeling around to my display I punch in a few more metrics. I thought maybe it wasn’t them, that my memory was fooling me, but everything Epic has says they are indeed my parents.
“I don’t understand why they don’t remember me…” I say for the umpteenth time.
Kate has the faraway look in her eyes she gets when reading people.
“You should have told us, Amelia, we could have helped,” she says, blowing a strand of perfect black hair out of her eyes.
“I’m sorry. The more people knew the more likely Cat-7 would know I was on to them. It’s taken me forever to find them, Kate, I just couldn’t risk it,” I tell her. Of course I’m not looking at her, I punch a couple more buttons and—
My chair jerks around and she’s eye-level with me.
“We’re friends, Amelia, or supposed to be. You should have trusted me.” The pain in her voice is heartbreaking.
I am the dumbest smart person I know. I drop my face covering it with my hands. I was so wrapped up, so focused on my parents I hadn’t even thought about telling her. What’s worse, that I didn’t trust her or I didn’t think to even tell her? A hundred different words come to mind but all I do is sit there with my mouth open like an idiot. The genuine hurt on her face is killing me. What would Luke think when he found out? Would… would he break up with me? If he felt as betrayed as Kate does…
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