“What about your mom?” Caro asked. “Bet she hates having to pack up and move all the time. Ours would have a cow.”
“I never met my mother.”
Caro’s eyes rounded. She appeared shocked to her core. “Crap. I’m sooo sorry.” And she followed up by lunging at Jay and giving her what would have been a rib-cracking hug for anyone remotely human.
Jay patted her awkwardly on the back until Caro released her to ask, “So who’s looking after you since your dad died?”
She noted Tyler listening intently, despite his apparent interest in the shaft of a tiny feather poking out from his comforter. He eased the feather out and twirled it between his fingertips.
She hadn’t anticipated being thoroughly questioned. Even by someone as ingenuous as Caro there was a potential risk. However, there was no time like the present to see if there were any holes in her cover story. “My uncle. Well, he’s not really my uncle, he’s a guardian my father appointed in his will. He’s out of town at the moment.”
“Outstanding! What I wouldn’t give—”
“To have to do all your own cooking and washing and housework,” Tyler interrupted. “Yeah, bet you’d looove that.”
Caro snort a wry laugh. “Not! Okay, so back to the video clip. Tyler’s personal problems might not be as huge as yours, Jay, but I don’t think he should take all the crap for coming to your rescue. It’d be a crying shame if he had to give up coaching the girls’ baseball team. They’re doing really well in the league since he took over as coach.”
Tyler’s eyebrows disappeared beneath his tousled fringe. “A compliment from my sister? I think I just died of shock.”
She sniffed. “I tell it like it is.”
“And I happen to agree with you, Caro,” Jay said. “Tyler should not have to take the blame. But I believe we can kill two birds with one stone. Remember the tracking program I mentioned? I assure you it will track all the users who’ve viewed the original clip, and decrypt their IP addresses so I can verify whether anyone who’s likely to cause us problems has viewed it.”
“You really are a computer geek!” Caro appeared totally unworried by the implications of a “normal” teenage girl possessing that degree of computer programming skills. Black and white. That was how Caro saw life. How restful it must be to live in such a simple, uncomplicated world.
And now for her brother. The one who hid his true self. The one who had secrets, like she did.
Tyler gnawed his lip. “Even presuming all the views have been local—kids from school, Mom’s work computer and the like—there’re still too many cell phones and laptops and home computers unaccounted for. Either Vanessa or Matt could have forwarded the original clips to anyone by now. It’s not gonna be possible to hack into everyone’s computer, or swipe everyone’s cell phone and delete this clip. Basically, we’re screwed.”
“In theory, it’s not impossible to overcome that problem but it’s far more likely I’d remain one step behind each new person sharing the video.” Jay briefly considered using the device hidden away in her apartment. She’d based it on the same principle as an electromagnetic pulse weapon. Power it up, and it’d affect all electronic devices within a hundred mile radius, rendering them permanently useless.
Of course it’d also bring the entire town and its surrounds to its knees, and more than likely telegraph her whereabouts to anyone who cared to monitor such things. She would not utilize anything so obvious unless forced to. First she would decrypt the IP addresses, calculate the odds she could be traced to Snapperton, and then decide her future. The problem of the video clip being viewed and then saved on a viewer’s personal computer could be neutralized using an IP address-targeted virus. It wasn’t a full-proof solution but it was the best she could do under the circumstances.
A mini version of The Pulse would be useful, too—one that would affect only a small, contained area, and was specific to certain devices such as cell phones. She wouldn’t need to render the devices unusable, merely corrupt specific data files stored on them. She commenced designing both the virus and the mini-pulse device while she listened to Tyler and his sister.
“So we just have to hope….” Tyler absently stroked the tiny white feather he’d pulled from his comforter. His eyes were shadowed with worries he was reluctant to voice.
“Hope what?” Caro asked.
“The clip hasn’t been emailed to anyone who really matters,” Tyler said. “Bottom line, if Vanessa’s already sent it to Principal Harris, and Ms. Harris decides I’m a bad influence and pulls me as coach, so what? I’ll deal with it. In the grand scheme of things, it’s nothing compared to Jay having to skip town because these guys have caught up with her.” He scrubbed his fingers through his hair, making it stand up in unruly, gel-assisted spikes. “Shit, Jay. I’m so sorry I’ve screwed things up for you. I’ll be gutted if you have to leave Snapperton because of me. If I hadn’t lost my temper—”
“Don’t blame yourself. I noticed Matt attempting to video the fight earlier on and merely asked him to put the phone away. I should have insisted he delete the video, and checked whether he’d taken another. It is unlike me to be so distracted.”
Tyler seemed more than just a little concerned at the implication Jay might be forced to leave Snapperton. She liked that he wanted her to stay. She liked it very much indeed.
“So what are we gonna do?” Caro asked.
Jay swiveled to face her. “Do the students carry their cell phones with them at all times?”
“Duh! What planet are you from? Teachers have hissy fits if they spot a cell phone in class, so everyone keeps them in their bags on silent mode. But during breaks it’s text city. Lunchtime in the cafeteria is chronic.”
“Good.” Jay allowed herself to smile as she explained her plan to Tyler and Caro, and contemplated what humans called “sweet revenge”.
~~~
Jay disarmed her security system and entered her apartment. She didn’t bother to turn on the lights—she could see perfectly well in the dark. She walked over to the table and powered up her computer. Given the tedium of the tasks she was about to perform, she instructed her neurological processor to shut down certain bodily functions, and entered a state similar to “downtime”, when she recharged and upgraded her systems.
But as with all downtime periods in recent months, while her fingers flew over the keyboard and she remained physically occupied, her mental processes played games. She was ensnared in recollection of the past. A dream.
The instant the first task was complete, she emerged from the dream. She shook her head in an attempt to clear the last vivid images from her mind before she began her next task.
Her dreams were yet another anomaly to add to the others affecting her. Cyborgs did not dream. At least, to her knowledge she’d not been programmed with the capacity to dream. But dream she did—recurring dreams about Father’s death, which left her questioning everything she understood about herself. Something was happening inside her. Something beyond the mere tangible aspects of her physical construction. Something profound.
A droplet of moisture plopped on to the tabletop. She stared at it, already knowing what it signified but strangely unwilling to confirm it absolutely.
Tears.
She was crying. Again. As she’d done when Father initiated the termination sequence and forced her to end his life.
She wiped her face. Tears. Such a human reaction to pain. But she was not programmed to feel physical pain. Ergo, the logical conclusion was that this reaction sprang from emotional distress—the kind of distress that, if she’d been human, might well occur from reliving a loved one’s death.
But being distressed over Father’s death was illogical. He had chosen to die, and his dying had served two purposes. It had prevented the old man from suffering a slow, painful death from an incurable cancer. And, by taking Jay’s command code with him to his grave, he had protected her as best he could. Now no living human possessed the code that would
make Jay a servant to their will. She could not be compelled to harm others, or be used as a weapon. She was free to make her own decisions. If she felt anything at all, it should have been elation because no one would command her again. Ever.
So why did she feel something she could only identify as sadness whenever she recalled Alexander Durham?
What was happening to her?
She ran an internal diagnostic and found nothing untoward, nothing to explain this strange phenomenon. She practiced a shrug, such as humans used when confronted with things they could not change. As Father had been so fond of saying, all would be revealed in time.
She picked up the back-plate, screwed it on to the pocket-sized electronic device she’d been working on, and placed the device on the tabletop. It resembled a cell phone. If anyone saw her with it, no one would think it strange or unusual. She didn’t bother to test it. It would perform exactly as she’d designed it to.
She turned her attention to her monitor and the lines of data cascading down the screen. As she shifted, Tyler’s unique fragrance wafted from the shirt he’d loaned her. The shirt she should have removed the moment she got home from school, and returned to Tyler earlier in the evening. The shirt she was so very reluctant to relinquish because while she wore it, she could pretend that he was here, now, with her.
And then, an overwhelming urge to move cascaded over her, through her. She tried to ignore the twinges of her muscles, the prickling of her skin, as though her outer shell had become too small, too inadequate to contain what was within.
She was capable of sitting or standing motionless for hours on end, so this urge was yet another anomaly. Her brain constantly performed multiple tasks at once, so the part that insisted on dwelling upon Tyler was not causing the problem. That part happily analyzed every word he’d uttered in her presence, his every little nuance of tone and expression, while another part analyzed the data the program spat onto the screen.
She stuck it out for another three minutes before she gave in and pushed her chair away from the table. The program would alert her if it identified any data outside the parameters she’d set. There was no real need for her to scan the screeds of code.
She spent an hour running through tai chi forms but even that discipline failed to calm her body’s unnatural urges. When the harsh beep of the electronic alert shattered the smothering silence, she believed herself grateful, despite knowing the alert heralded unwelcome news. She quelled her brain’s bizarre desire for her body to be continually in motion and resumed her seat to analyze the search results.
The IP address the program had targeted and the accompanying data appeared innocuous enough, but something about it had triggered the alert.
Adrenaline thrummed through her system, causing a flush of an emotion akin to human excitement. She might be what Tyler and Caro termed a computer whiz, and as a cyborg she had a unique advantage, but she was dealing with an extremely talented human who was skilled in covering his tracks. If she was correct in her assumption, she’d encountered this particular human before. She smiled, anticipating a battle with a worthy opponent.
Chapter Eight
Shit! The man known to his team as Michael White, whacked his fist on his desktop. Papers fluttered into the air and then settled. Luckily there was no one to witness his lack of control. The building was deserted, and the only light source in the darkened office was the greenish-hued glow of his laptop’s LCD screen. It illuminated his face, throwing gargoyle shadows up the bland grey walls.
He couldn’t believe his luck. First, the original clip he’d saved to his hard drive had been corrupted by a very sneaky little virus before he could back it up, and now this?
A masked Robin capered across his screen. She’d replaced the original Boy Wonder Left Wondering clip with one featuring another Boy Wonder—namely some guy who’d played Robin in the Batman TV series back the 60s.
Michael shook his head and leaned back in his chair. His life might be going down the toilet right now, but at least he didn’t have to go out in public wearing a red top and green shorts with matching elf boots, and to top it all off, a shiny gold cape, like that poor bastard. He scowled at Robin and closed his laptop. He drummed his fingers on the desktop and considered his options. His very limited options.
When the uploaded video had first been flagged by his tracking program, and he’d viewed the clip, he’d fist-punched the air. He knew exactly where she was. He could send in an extraction team, and it would all be over. He could say goodbye to chasing rumors and hearsay from one hick town to another. Hell, he might even be able to embrace his old life again, pick up where he’d left off. If his old life would still have him.
But it appeared the kid had been one step ahead of him—again. While he’d been imagining what his life would be like when this nightmare was over, she had been busy covering her tracks. It was a given she would have decrypted his IP address and realized she’d been compromised. It wouldn’t be long before she was on the move—again. Or at the very least, planning another little surprise for anyone who dared come after her.
Michael considered keeping this latest development to himself. After all, until he got a hold of the original clip again, he had no hard evidence. But—
He huffed out a sigh, grabbed his cell phone from the desktop and made the call. The instant it connected, he spoke without waiting for acknowledgement. “I got a hit on the kid, sir. And—”
“You mean it. You’d do well to remember it isn’t human, Mr. White.”
Michael winced at the icy-cold tone. “Yes, sir. I got a hit on the cyborg.”
“How?”
“A video clip uploaded to a social networking site.”
“Send it to me now.”
“She’s corrupted the source file, and replaced the original clip on the site with another one. She’s covering her tracks.”
The silence on the end of the line commanded more information. Immediately.
“I’m working on it, sir.”
More silence.
A single droplet of sweat rolled down his face, seeping into his shirt collar. “I need more time.”
“Call me in the morning when you have something new to report.”
“Yes, sir.” Michael found himself speaking into the discordant beeping of an already disconnected line. His superior was not known for his patience, or for anything less than substantiated facts. Which was why Michael had neglected to mention he knew where she’d been hiding. Chances of her still being there were slim, he told himself, and—
God. He was torn. He wanted this over but he’d give anything in the world for the endgame to take place somewhere else. Right now, he was praying she’d act true to type and up-stakes and vanish.
He slumped back in his chair and blotted his forehead with his sleeve. The kid—the cyborg—was good. Really good. So good, that even after five years of painstaking investigation, Michael still hadn’t untangled the maze of offshore accounts that had absorbed Alexander Durham’s considerable wealth after his death. “They”, the faceless, nameless people who comprised the clandestine corporation Michael worked for, had been playing a waiting game for years, hoping Durham’s protégé would slip up and make a mistake. Finally she had, by allowing herself to be caught on video. But Michael wanted—needed—to be certain of all the facts before he sent in the extraction team. He couldn’t risk civilians being caught up in the extraction. Especially not one of the civilians he’d seen in that clip.
If he could have avoided making that call, delayed a bit longer….
He’d done the right thing. His superior would have found out if Michael had sat on the information. He always found out.
Michael rubbed his eyes, rotated his shoulders and flexed his fingers. Regardless of what might prove to be a personal stake in this operation, he had a job to do. And if he valued his continuing health and wellbeing—and the continued health and wellbeing of his estranged family—the deadline he’d been given must be adhered to.
He’d think of something. He always did.
Chapter Nine
The crowd flowed around Tyler like he had an invisible force-field shielding him from physical contact. No one spoke to him. No one made eye contact. He might as well have been invisible.
Before Homecoming, he’d been star pitcher for the baseball team, and a top-scoring basketball player. He’d been one of the jocks who ruled the school. Girls had pulled all kinds of stunts to get his attention. But after the Vanessa debacle, he’d been demoted to a kid on the fringe who didn’t fit in anywhere.
If he’d spoken up and defended himself against the lies and rumors, maybe he’d have kept some of his friends. Hell, he might have even knocked the god of jock-straps off his pedestal and shown him up for the piece of scum that he was. But for Vanessa’s sake, he’d kept quiet. At least, Tyler told himself it was for her sake. Just like he told himself he’d done the right thing, and didn’t give a crap about what anyone else thought.
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