by Mary Weber
She pushed her thoughts backward through the cable, uttering a scream at the ensuing pain. She didn’t care—just pressed farther, weaving her way mentally into the system of algorithms and wiring until she hit a circuit board that blasted her mind with a display of the power codes. Her body jolted at the shock.
She clenched her teeth and scanned it and, without overthinking the fact it was the weirdest thing she’d ever done, mentally adjusted the data stream as she would on a virtual-reality screen.
Abruptly the lights went out. The cord hissed and clicked, then dropped its wiry fingers from her skull and neck and retracted into the wall. Like a snake recoiling from its prey. Sofi’s head dropped forward, lighter, clearer. She blinked.
And looked up.
The Delonese gasped and stepped back, and Sofi rolled off the bed as the door timer went off.
Whir! The alarm turned on.
Dodging, she ran for the door and slid through it before the timer clicked and the thing dropped back down to seal in place behind her. Then mentally imagined locking it.
She paused and tried not to vomit all over the floor. That cerebral hack of their system was a mind jack.
Crud.
Now what.
She licked her lips.
“Shilo, you there?”
She went for her handheld—Vic?—only to discover it missing.
Focus, Sof. She scanned the hallway and prepared to run, then slowed, stalled—and shut her eyes. Intuition telling her the answer was different. Just like she’d said to Miguel. Just like Heller’s note stated.
It was underneath the surface.
C’mon, Sof.
Tick, tick, tick . . .
Her brain felt like a freaking clock, with all the pieces ready to assemble. The memories. The mind game. The Delonese tech.
She just couldn’t grab the bigger picture.
“Don’t make it all in vain. The codes are inside.” Opening her eyes, she stared at the small white hall, shut out the yelling Delonese stuck in the room behind her, and searched for whatever she was supposed to be seeing from the nonexistent brother in her head. Where’s the beat, Sof?
She listened for the thrumming she’d heard earlier—like the sounds of a shuttle. Then noted the alarm still whirring, followed by the pulse, pulse, pulsing of the systems she’d entered through the cord’s fingers at the base of her head.
The components trickled back in place like musical notes. Numbers. Symbols. She let the imaginary strains descend and let her mind dance to the bass beats, thudding each code stream into place as if it were a numerical rhythm.
The data she’d accessed through the spinal portal was still there—not just in her brain, but in the walls around her. But broader. More expansive. As if she could reach out to the rest of the core. Assembling. Reassembling.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick . . .
Her mind exploded with a visual of a massive internal system. Too much—too intense—her body reacted to the surge and threw her against the wall. She hit with a thump and dropped to the floor, those streams of data still flying in front of her eyes.
It was the entire Delonese hard drive.
Tock . . .
And she was staring at every detail of it.
Oh gad. She could mentally access and read their codes.
Sofi slipped a hand to her mouth and stared. Her brain—her mind—how was this possible? Was this what they’d done to her?
Was this what her mother had been trying to hide, and Ethos trying to access?
Sofi couldn’t just evoke a response from a lifeless shell of a Delonese.
She chuckled aloud. Her mind could see their complex system as if it were just floating there in her head. More than that—she could comprehend it without even being hooked up to a comp.
She imagined accessing their system, then began analyzing and worming her way into files—as if sorting a set of songs on her playlist—into the very bowels of the Delonese hardware. Reaching out with her mind and wrapping new streams of code through their system, like a tree stretching its branches and roots all at once. It was beautiful really. And brilliant.
She accessed the virtual log and scrolled through the telescreen images. Tuning in to the conversation links to get her bearings. Until she realized she wasn’t on Delon.
She was on a shuttle. And it was two hours from Earth.
What the—?
Where was everyone else?
She scrolled over today’s vid logs. “I don’t care what the benefits or challenges are, Lord Ethos,” the Delonese Council chairperson was saying on-screen. “The reality is, Girl-Sofi was able to hack into our system from one of our guestrooms—using the help of a tech kid and an AI. And that alone makes her an imminent death sentence to this planet.” The Delonese encircling him were nodding in agreement. “Until we know what has allowed her to even minimally understand how to access our tech, we think it wisest to continue to have her and all other live humans separated from this space station. We cannot risk her breaking in again.”
She sped forward.
“Lord Chairperson,” Ethos’s voice was saying over a com, “they are showing remarkable abilities. Ones we cannot begin to downplay the nature of. I’ve been informed the same ingenuity shown with our systems has also begun stimulating the hive minds from this distance. Our medical team is working on her and the others now.” She heard him shift in his seat. “We will continue on course Earth, where I will stay to see that the situations there are adequately dealt with regarding Corps 30, 24, and 13. When we feel it is sufficiently so, I will deposit the ambassadors back in their positions. Then I will return with this shuttle, the children, and Girl-Sofi. At which point I will expect to share good news with the Council.”
“Very good, Lord Ethos. You have our full support to proceed.”
She shook her head. And reached out through the shuttle’s tech systems all the way through space to the planet’s internal pathways. Her mind stretched past the firewalls like slicing through water and down into its core.
She focused first on the viruses she’d uploaded to the Delonese system yesterday, then called up the map of human sensors, same as she would’ve on her handscreen. And yanked them open to splay out over the ship.
A display of red dots lit up behind three doors in the next hall from where she was standing. Her lungs expanded.
Mapping the controls with her thoughts, she mentally accessed the fastest routes to reach them. Then opened her eyes, blinked, and took off at a run.
She rounded the first corner on the shuttle, only to be jerked backward into a wall again as her brain suddenly exploded with buzzing.
Blasted aliens. She pulled herself up. It was as if the place had come alive and woken the hive, and the data streams were moving faster than her neural pathways could attempt. They were coming after her.
She tried to resist with her mind and shut down their coded attacks, but there was too much data to hold all at once. Sofi gave up, erected a new mental firewall, then physically headed for the second hall and the first door that, if her cerebral image was correct, held Miguel inside.
24
MIGUEL
Someone was calling his name.
A woman.
She had a nice voice, Miguel decided. Inviting him to join her in saving the world or some such thing. He frowned. Why did the world need saving? It was perfect. The Delonese had made it so—had promised so. Just like they’d promised to help him advance their future together through his exciting new UW Corp initiatives.
“Miguel,” the girl said, and the way she said it almost made him wish the world did, in fact, need saving just so he could take the sadness from her tone. But at least he could wake up for her. Tell her it was really quite alright.
He opened his eyes.
Then offered a smile to a girl with a kind face, brown skin like a summer sunset, and long, dark hair flying everywhere. With black eyes full of an anger so pure, he wonder
ed if he’d encountered it before.
Wait, was she someone he’d angered in his past?
The next moment his spine split open as his neck and head caught fire and a blast of ice shot into the back of his skull.
It was like a freaking fire hose. Visions. Images. Pictures and conversations, pouring out over him, weaving their way into his skin and nerves and neural connections. The fresh scenes of someone else’s life suddenly coming back as his own. They were from his life. His scenes. His conversations.
He glanced up at the girl with the wild eyes. This was his friend.
The downloads were simultaneously terrible and intoxicating. As if the gaps he didn’t know existed just got filled in and so much richer. And the feelings of a thousand memories exploded all at once, fresh and raw, as if he was experiencing them again for the first time.
Then, like a spigot, it shut off. And he smiled up at the girl. “Have I ever told you I love how much you smell like Earth?”
“Not that I can recall, no. Have I ever told you how much I hate the smell of Delon?” She leaned against him and disconnected something at the back of his neck.
He clenched his jaw and shut his eyes and tried not to unleash a slew of inappropriate words as the thing hissed and recoiled and just about made his nerves claw through his skin.
His head flopped forward at the same moment the glitching stopped. He blinked. The haze around his eyes disappeared along with the pain in his neck. Cripe. He looked up at Sofi and blinked. And saw her more clearly than perhaps he’d ever seen her in the entire last two years.
This woman with the dark eyes and a light in her soul that, eighteen months ago, had beckoned him home. It was still beckoning. Leading the way in bravery and beauty. And the abilities through which she’d clearly done her thing—and done it well.
Whatever the diablos “it” was. “What just happened?”
“According to their comp logs, after the soldiers grabbed you in the blue vat room filled with lifeless Delonse, they took you to meet with Ethos.”
He rolled his shoulders, then ran a hand through his hair. “Yeah, I remember that. It’s just after that—”
He shook his head to clear the haze that had followed. “There was a fog.”
Sofi slid her hand on his arm. “Apparently he didn’t much like your lack of adherence in that room and decided to hook you and Claudius up to their med system to wipe and reshape your memories.” She slowed, and her voice softened. “Just like he’s done with Earth’s kids for the past eight years.”
He pursed his lips and stared at her. And stayed listening.
“When they grabbed the rest of us, they did the same,” she said quietly. “It’s the glitching and Shi’s voice that finally gave it away and woke me up. I disconnected and came to find you.”
He opened his mouth. Shut it. “That’s a lot to take in.” Then leveled a slight grin. “And you figured all that out? How?”
She smiled. “Miguel, I can’t just hack them with a comp-screen. I can access them. With my mind. I can mentally access their system.”
His brow went up. He rubbed a hand over his neck and his grin widened. “Of course you can.” Then he glanced at the door and frowned. “So, does that mean you’re able to stop Ethos?”
“I think so. I’ve actually not tried yet.” Her smile turned sheepish.
He nodded as his expression grew serious. So, was any of it real? he wanted to ask. Inquire later, Miguel.
He shut his eyes to make sure the glitching was still gone before moving to—
The sweetest pair of lips in the world pressed softly into his. His eyes fluttered open but the mouth had already slipped away, and she was pulling him up with her. “According to the records I accessed, our conversations were real,” she said shyly. “Just—you know—in case you’re wondering. Not our physical movements, but the words and emotions were. Which should make it easier to find the others.”
The others. Right. Images flashed. The faces of his friends and the children Ethos was attempting to . . . He frowned. “Where is Ethos?”
“In the main cabin.” She stopped and looked at him. “We’re on a ship. Headed for Earth.”
25
INOLA
“Jerrad! no—please, no!”
Inola could hardly see through the smoke and fear. And the tears. She was weeping. She couldn’t stop weeping. She ducked low into the seat and grabbed the stun gun from her bag. Then tossed it aside and tugged out the tech-gun from Jerrad’s jacket hanging open on his lifeless body. And tried not to vomit on the seat. Her friend!
She slid toward the opposite door and felt the handle as the hover’s sirens kept wailing and voices were shouting and a red laser dot suddenly flickered through the car. Someone was waiting for her head to appear.
For the first time in her life she wished she was trained at killing more than just political careers. The person deserved to die. To suffer horrifically for this. She slid down to flatten against the floor and rubbed a hand over her eyes to clear the stinging smoke and tears. What had she done? She’d gotten him killed!
Voices. Someone yelled. More laser dots—hundreds—filled the car. Cripe.
Inola heard a bump against the door and then someone was opening it. She lifted the gun, but they said in a hushed tone, “Don’t shoot, we’re here to help.” Without waiting, the young man grabbed her arm and pulled her out—straight into the open door of a blue hover.
Shots exploded, and he jumped in and slammed it shut. “Go, go, go!” he yelled at the car. A second later it was speeding from the scene, self-swerving around the corner before turning on its lights and heading into the heart of downtown traffic.
The guy crawled off Inola, who was now screaming and calling Jerrad’s name.
“Lady, lady—it’s okay! You’re okay!”
“We left Jerrad.”
“Yeah, well, he wasn’t okay, and you’d be dead if we’d tried to grab him. But here.” The guy handed her a tissue and waited for her to catch her breath and stop shrieking about Jerrad.
It took her a minute. To become rational again. To realize his point was valid—even if that didn’t change the shock or the horror. Or the fact that Jerrad was gone.
And that someone had just tried to kill her.
She frowned and sat up. “Who are you?”
The faces of a twentysomething-year-old kid with a red beanie and a beard, who looked like a tech geek if she ever saw one, and Nadine both stared back at her from the opposite backseat.
The guy rubbed his chin, then stuck his hand out. “Ranger.”
She didn’t take it—just nodded warily. Then turned to the star. The girl who’d just traumatized their world with her announcement and whom Inola’d been on her way to see. Inola set the gun beside her but kept her hand on it. “To what do I owe this saving? How much money do you both want?”
“Let’s call it monitoring more than saving. And no on the money.” He said the last part as if he found it humorous.
She bit her lip. The blue car that’d been following her was his. “I see.” So he was the one. “You’ve also been sending me bizarre messages?”
The guy leaned back and tapped his handscreen, which looked similar to the hand-built kind Sofi preferred. “Look, let’s not get any weird ideas here. I’m not into people’s moms or anything. And, in fact, I can’t actually recall ever truly rescuing anyone in my life.”
Nadine chuckled dryly.
“Well, looks like you pulled it off,” Inola felt obliged to say. “So what did he want?”
He took a thoughtful look at her. “I’m friends with your daughter. The same people who set her up murdered my girlfriend with the bomb. When I intercepted your vid for Sofi last night—”
Inola’s hand eased off the gun. “Your girlfriend was in the FanFight explosion.”
“One of the Ns,” he said in a tone indicating he’d no wish to talk about it.
She should’ve known. She’d seen the triplets but rarely
spoken to them. But, of course, they had real lives with people they loved. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. Then lifted her chin. She’d take it—whatever he was planning. “What are you going to do to me?”
He frowned. “To you? No.” Ranger shook his head. “To them.” He ran a hand over his beanie and cleared his throat as the hover downshifted and slowed. “Having intercepted a number of rather intriguing conversations between you and your gal, Gaines, CEO Hart, and then tonight, you and Ambassador Ethos, I figured Nadine here could splice something together. Maybe cause a few waves. Expose a few lies. Considering I can’t help Sofi up there, might as well make a few lives hell down here.”
She turned to Nadine, who was smoothing her strawberry-blonde hair up into a ponytail.
The i-reality star shrugged her delicately tattooed shoulders. “I’m always in for a good story.” She tightened her jaw. “Especially if it involves someone trying to take me down or selling little kids.”
Inola went back to assessing Ranger, her leader-of-a-corporation skills kicking in. Finally. “And what do you want out of this?”
“I want you to admit what you’ve all been doing is wrong, that the way the UWC’s running the world—how you’re running this city—is wrong. Y’all are destroying people’s lives.” When Inola remained silent, he dropped his tone. “And I want you to destroy Gaines and Hart’s plans by letting me help you both survive tomorrow so we can expose them along with that Delonese, Ethos. Talk about a sick b—” He stalled, his expression seeming to take into account he was cursing in front of a mom. “Because I’m pretty sure their plan is to kill you both.”
“Although, if she’s not up for entering,” Nadine said, batting her eyes toward Inola, “you could just get mama-CEO here out of the country.”
Inola sniffed. “Not unless I want a host of Delonese and bounty hunters pursuing me the rest of my life. Thanks, but I’d like to face the United World Corps full on as it skewers me.”
The hover stopped in a parking garage, and Ranger ran a scan with his handheld, checking for sensors or people, then opened the door and slid out. “Sofi keeps a stash of her FanFight gear here. We’ll try a few suits out, and then I’ll rig up some tech to connect me to them. That way, while your Corp gamer teams will be assisting you through the virtual-reality aspects, I’ll be able to run backup control. Meaning they shouldn’t be able to override anything.”