Flesh Blood Steel

by David Jones

  “I’ll walk,” Jake said. “And no one’s touching me until I get some answers.”

  Rudd pursed his lips. He looked as though he might disagree, but then surprised Jake. “Okay. I’ll go with you to tech. We can talk on the way. But you’re getting a diagnostic. No questions, no balking.”

  “Lead the way,” Jake said.

  Cymobius headquarters wasn’t what Jake had imagined. Hundreds of people dressed in business attire bustled here and there behind its smoked-glass façade, making their way to various parts of the building. A security guard stood behind a round desk at one end of the foyer. He smiled when he saw them approaching.

  “Good afternoon, sir,” he said. “How about those Celtics?”

  Rudd gave him a fake frown. “Next time, Tyreese. You wait. They’re due, and the Pistons will feel it.”

  “We’ll see, sir.” Tyreese glanced at Jake then down at a data pad he held. His eyebrows shot up. “Good to see you, Mr. Harris. You’re looking a might young. Been playing NARC in some high school?”

  “Something like that.” Jake eyed the guard’s tablet. It must have matched his face to some personnel database despite the relative reduction in his outward age.

  Tyreese smiled then looked past Jake. “Hello, Ms. Oliver.”

  “Tyreese.” Oliver favored the guard with a surprisingly genuine smile that surprised Jake. He figured her face would have cracked to perform such a feat.

  “Would you like me to alert the general staff that you’re in the building, Mr. Rudd?” Tyreese asked.

  “No thank you. We’re headed to tech for a bit. But do have the kitchen send up lunch for two in the command suite.” Rudd met Oliver’s gaze and she nodded.

  Clearly, the lunch was for the two of them. Were they an item? Jake blocked that mental image before it could form. Gross.

  “This way,” Rudd said, motioning for Jake to follow him to an elevator behind the reception desk. He passed a hand across a black bracket set in the wall and the doors whooshed open. Rudd waved Jake inside and the rest crowded in with him. Oliver stood uncomfortably close, never taking her eyes from Jake’s face. Her attention made him want to scream. Did she expect him to go berserk, maybe attack Rudd? Ignoring her wasn’t easy. He turned away, but her gaze remained, hot on the side of his neck.

  The doors opened to reveal a brightly lit corridor with bland, gray carpet, tan walls, and all the pizazz of a laundromat. Rudd led the way along the hall. A few people in dress clothes or lab coats passed them, giving Rudd deferential nods.

  “You own Cymobius?” Jake asked.

  Rudd waved open a large, steel door that gave onto what looked like a dentist’s office with five chairs arranged in a row. Scads of equipment, most of it mounted on swingarms, surrounded each of the seats.

  “You helped me build it,” he said, ushering Jake toward one of the chairs.

  “Not yet,” Jake said, holding back. “I want to know what you’re going to do to me.”

  Oliver started forward, but Rudd waved her off. He pointed at one of the men wearing a lab coat, the same one who had tried to push Jake onto the gurney when they first arrived. “This is Dr. Crocker. He’s been your personal physician-tech for the last seven years. Do you recognize him?”

  Crocker was a tall, lanky man with red-gold hair curly as a wire brush, and sallow skin.

  “No,” Jake said.

  “Memory loss? How extensive?” Crocker asked.

  “Harris thinks he’s sixteen,” Rudd said.

  “Oh?” The doctor’s face brightened. “That’s interesting. How long have you had this delusion?”

  Jake shrugged one shoulder. “Five or six hours.”

  “I need you to sit,” Crocker said. “You won’t be harmed. I need to check your brain-cybrid connection. Your condition may be a simple fix.”

  “Maybe I don’t want it fixed.”

  “You don’t have any choice,” Rudd said. He fished a small device from his breast pocket. It was flat, white, and about the length of a AA battery. He brushed his thumb across its face.

  Jake stumbled. He felt as though someone had kicked the backs of his knees.

  Oliver caught him under the arms as if she had known what Rudd planned, and shoved him into the nearest chair.

  “What did you do?” Jake demanded. His body felt like a cement post. He couldn’t move his arms or legs, only his eyes and mouth. Panic filled him. This must have been what Anya had tried to do to him back at the apartment. She had seemed so confident he wouldn’t be able to move until he had. But not this time. He struggled to shift even one finger, and failed. “Stop this. Let me up!”

  “I’ll leave it to you, doctors,” Rudd said. “Update me when you have anything. Jake, I hope you come back soon. We need you. You coming, Oliver?”

  She shook her head. “Think I’d better stick here for a few minutes, make sure everything goes smoothly.”

  Rudd nodded and left via the steel door.

  Crocker keyed something at the top of Jake’s head. He felt that horrid whirring sensation and knew that the top of his cranium had flipped open like gull doors on a high-priced car.

  “What are you doing to me?”

  “Spearcast is activated,” Crocker said to a female doctor across from him.

  “But only the homing beacon,” said the woman. She had produced a small device not unlike the one Anya had used earlier. She passed it over Jake’s forehead. “He’s offline too.”

  “Got it,” Crocker said. He plopped a pad down on Jake’s chest and began tapping in keystrokes. “Reboot should do the trick. One second, and here—we—go.”

  A sea of information flooded Jake’s brain. He reeled under the onslaught, unable to catch his own thoughts for several seconds as unfocused data pummeled his consciousness aside. He suddenly knew the exact coordinates of every Mars rover landing site for every mission ever attempted on that planet. He knew that Crocker’s middle name was Harold, and that he was married with three children, one of whom had recently earned a company internship in Cymobius’s executive school.

  He knew for certain that his mother had died in that crash thirteen years ago.

  “Welcome back to Cymobius net,” Crocker said.

  A tear leaked from Jake’s right eye. It trickled toward his ear.

  “Okay, memory check,” said the female doctor, peering at the device in her hands. “Cybrid memory is fine. Don’t see any faults in the neuron linkages. How’s wetware?”

  Crocker eyed his own pad. “Cortex activity is normal enough. A little elevated, but he’s feeling some stress so why not? Harris, what’s your last memory? I want you to focus on that. Maybe we can coax the rest out.”

  Jake had no desire to coax anything out, especially some cold killer lurking in his unconsciousness, but that didn’t stop his traitorous thoughts from wheeling back to the last time he had seen his mom alive.

  “I was driving my mother’s car. It was foggy. A trucker hit us. I don’t think he saw the stop sign.”

  Crocker stared at his pad, sparing Jake not a glance. “Good. Then what? Do you remember the collision?”

  “I—” Jake began.

  “Gah, no!” Crocker shouted.

  “What is it?” Oliver asked.

  “Scanner went dead.” Crocker tapped his tablet several times with increasing ferocity.

  “Mine too,” said the other doctor.

  The overhead lights flickered, dimmed, then died. For an instant the room plunged into blackness. Then a set of red florescent bulbs blinked to life along the top edge of the wall. They bathed the room in a pinkish glow.

  All at once the invisible weights that had been securing Jake’s limbs disappeared. He flexed his fingers ever-so-slightly, confirming that he had regained control of his body. No one noticed the movement.

  Oliver pulled out a mobile phone, and began talking to someone. She cursed. “It’s everywhere. Power’s out across the entire campus.”

  Dr. Crocker started fiddling with the co
nnections on Jake’s head.

  “What are you doing?” Oliver asked.

  “No reason to leave his cybrid exposed. We can’t work on him without power.”

  “The generators are running.”

  “They don’t supply enough juice to run all the diagnostic equipment.”

  Oliver eyed Jake. “Is he still restrained?”

  Dr. Crocker lifted one of Jake’s hands, and let it fall. Jake did nothing to stop it as it flopped into his lap. “Yeah. And we can’t fix that either till we get the power back.”

  “You can’t leave me like this,” Jake said. He thought he sounded convincing, just worried enough with a nice mix of fear.

  “Got no choice,” Crocker said. “Just hang tight.”

  Oliver’s phone rang. “Yeah.”

  To his amazement, Jake could hear the voice coming from her earpiece.

  “It’s Rudd. We’ve got no idea what’s up with the power. Could be an attack. I want you and Wilson on the perimeter with the guards. You’ve got command.”

  Oliver glanced at Jake. “Yes, sir.”

  “How’s Harris?” Rudd asked.

  “Listening to us, and fine far as I can tell. Docs aren’t done with him.”

  “Crocker knows what he’s doing. Get out to the fence, you got three minutes.”

  “Roger that.”

  “Any word on the power?” asked the female doctor.

  Oliver shook her head. “Don’t worry about that. You make sure Harris stays put. If anything happens with him, call me directly.”

  “Will do,” Crocker said.

  Oliver left the room.

  With her gone, Jake considered what he should do. Escape, obviously, but what were his chances of getting away on his own? Slim seemed like an understatement. He needed help.

  Jake thought about asking Crocker where Anya and the others were being held, only to realize he already knew. The information cascading into his brain didn’t come in the form of a schematic he could see on his vision, or even a 3D model. It was more like accessing an old memory, only one that came back crystal clear.

  Anya and the others were being held in a prison facility buried deep beneath Cymobius’s main campus. Unfortunately, there was no door to that level in this part of the building, which made some sense, this being the public face of Cymobius to the world. No corporate magnate would want his regular employees to routinely see prisoners being led through the foyer.

  Nevertheless, Jake resolved to go there and find Anya if he could. She had been his target. Jake wasn’t certain if that meant he had been meant to kill her or simply kidnap her. Either way, his involvement had gotten her wrapped up in this situation. Now, she was a prisoner in a Cymobius high security facility. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t remember any of that. Jake felt guilty for causing it. He recalled Rudd wrenching Anya’s head back by the hair when he interrogated her. Would he treat her any better now that she was his prisoner?

  Jake had a bitter feeling that he had managed to get Anya killed without meaning it. The only way to right that would be to save her and the other rebels, and maybe get some help escaping in the process.

  And besides, if this company, which had just tried to forcibly reboot his old self, wanted Jake to stay away from the rebels, he couldn’t think of any better place to go for help.

  With a soft whirr of servos, Crocker closed the port in Jake’s head. “You should probably take a nap,” he said. “It’s not like you’re going anywhere.”

  “Actually.” Jake stood up. “I think I am.”

  Dr. Crocker blanched, but he put himself between Jake and his colleague. “I don’t know how you’re doing that, but you need to sit down.”

  “So you can erase me? Turn me into someone I’m not? I don’t think so. Give me your phones.”

  The doctors shared a look. The woman handed her phone to Jake. Crocker hesitated.

  “Yours too, doc,” Jake said, holding out a hand.

  Crocker retrieved his phone from the large cargo pocket on his lab coat, but rather than hand it over, he started tapping away at its face.

  Jake snatched the thing from Crocker’s hand quick as starlight. Whatever code Crocker had been trying to send, he hadn’t finished typing it. Holding the phone between both hands, Jake snapped it in two with a sharp crack and buzzy hiss of static. The woman’s phone he crushed under his booted heel.

  “You need to think about what you’re doing, Harris,” Crocker said. “We can still salvage this situation. Climb back into the chair, and we’ll pretend nothing happened.”

  “I don’t think so.” Jake turned toward the room’s only exit.

  “Don’t do it,” Crocker’s voice rose an octave. “You walk out that door and I can’t help you. You’ll become a hunted man.”

  Jake waved his hand before the little strip next to the door. It made a soft bleeping sound and the door slid open. He looked over his shoulder.

  “Haven’t you heard, Doc? I’m not a man. I’m a killing machine."

  Chapter 7

  Choose

  The corridor outside the examination room stood empty. That was good.

  Jake let the steel door slide shut behind him, mercifully cutting off Crocker’s final shrill warning to stop. Jake kicked the electronic pad next to the door with the intention of deactivating it. He had expected to need several blows to do any damage, but the black square cracked on the first and its housing sank half an inch into the wall. Crocker and his partner weren’t getting out of that room anytime soon.

  Another palm-activated door stood at the end of the hall leading back into Cymobius’s cavernous entranceway. Jake had a feeling it wouldn’t work for him. He was already coming up with alternate plans for escape—the ceilings here looked to have a crawlspace—when the door beeped and slid open without a hitch.

  “Mr. Harris?” Tyreese, the guard Jake had passed on his way into the facility, favored him with a curious look.

  Jake managed not to jump in surprise, but only just. He kept feeling like someone was about to seize him. But, unless Dr. Crocker and his cohort had managed to raise an alarm in the last two minutes, he was probably safe. People here knew Harris, even if he looked younger than normal. Did they realize he was Cymobius’s top assassin? Or was he just another exec to them? Jake had no idea. Not that it mattered. They recognized him as some sort of bigshot around the place, which meant no one should question him. He had to take advantage of that while it lasted.

  Jake inspected the man’s broad face. Tyreese showed no sign that he was either surprised by or frightened of Jake. If anything, he looked preoccupied, his forehead wrinkled with worry. He fiddled with a data pad, lips compressed. His scent and mannerisms spoke of stress, frustration.

  “Any idea what’s going on with the power?” Jake asked.

  “No, sir. My department head won’t say, but his boss activated perimeter protocols, which tells me this is more than just an outage.”

  Jake nodded. A flood of pertinent details washed over his consciousness. He wasn’t quite certain where they were coming from—his cybrid obviously—but he suspected it had something to do with Crocker giving him Cymobius internet access. However WIFI worked in this place, the power outage hadn’t killed it.

  He knew, for instance, that perimeter protocol was Cymobius speak for a facility lockdown. Every spare security officer in the complex was forming up to cover a portion of the outer defenses. This was not Cymobius’s headquarters, that was buried under a mile of mountain in Utah, but it was a hardened compound. Surrounded by cement walls three feet thick topped with razor wire, an electronic detection field that permanently scanned every open approach, and a microwave-based immobilization system, the place was like a fortress. It would be nearly impossible to break into without an army, and even then the cost would be high in time, resources, and lives.

  Getting out, on the other hand, might not be so arduous.

  “Is the power out everywhere, or just here in the main building?” Ja
ke asked.

  “Everywhere. We thought it was something wrong with the municipal grid, but all the circuits have juice. Chatter on the radio makes it sound like it’s a computer problem. Thank God the backup generators kicked on.”

  “What about your tablet?”

  Tyreese shook his head. “All scanners are deactivated. Some systems are working, but it’s hit-or-miss.”

  “Thanks.” Jake turned for the doors. He could feel the Tyreese’s gaze on his back, but that was probably just nerves. If he played this right, he could make a clean getaway and just walk out.

  “Sir?”

  Jake froze. His cybrid flooded his mind with scenarios, offering combat solutions sufficient to neutralize Tyreese in the quickest way possible. He shook his head to clear them and turned slowly to regard the man.

  “If you don’t mind me saying, you might want to look a little older,” Tyreese said with a genuine grin. “Most of the ops here are bound to stop a teenager running around in a blackout. Without scanners, they aren’t likely to recognize you.”

  “Good point. Thanks again,” Jake said. Too bad he had no idea how to go about rearranging his body, and he had exactly zero time to even try.

  Jake exited the building through the bank of steel and glass doors at the front. A cadre of armed men stood on the steps, seven of them, scanning the approaches. They turned when the doors opened.

  “Hold up, kid,” said one of them. He wore the insignia of a captain in the Cymobius security forces, which Jake now knew was nearly thirty-thousand strong around the world. “Who are you?”

  “Harris,” Jake said. He was suddenly, keenly aware of his lack of credentials. It occurred to him that Oliver and the other troops who had brought him here had affixed blue badges to their lapels the moment they exited the truck. He hoped his cybrid might supply some sort of identification, or perhaps just a plan to get him through this situation.

  Nothing happened.

  The captain looked unimpressed. “And I’m President Flake. Get your hands where I can see them. How did you get here? Is anyone with you?”

  The captain took a step toward Jake, training his rifle—a gas-powered automatic that held thirty, 10mm, rounds per magazine—on him. The lazy bend in the guy’s leading knee coupled with his slight oblique angle to Jake, meant the captain was momentarily vulnerable to a double-leg take down. Though he wore a helmet, the throw would leave the guard bewildered as he and Jake descended the steps, which meant the rifle would be out of play at least until Jake ripped it from the captain’s hands.