by Ryan Somma
2.08
Alone in a vast desert expanse, Alice could find nothing familiar in the abyssal landscape. No paths, signs, buildings, or other structures provided a user interface to the system of any kind. Looking down, she found the standard IWA agent avatar in place, a black jumpsuit, thick boots, mask, goggles, and a gray backpack storing a wide array of software utilities. It was ages since she last wore the avatar, and hoped she wasn’t too out of practice with it.
She took a few steps forward, seeking a sense of navigation, and the landscape changed. The sandy dunes morphed into a red-lit room. Alice looked around it, feeling as if she should know its purpose. Then it came to her. The metal housing and types of monitors covering the different consoles were the giveaways. She was standing in a Navy ship’s nuclear reactor control room.
She approached the nearest console, but the room transformed into a networking closet before she reached it. Her breath condensed around her face in the refrigerated air, and she shivered against the sudden chill. This new setting was a standard corporate networking room.
Walking forward another place materialized, a government building of some kind, which faded to a busy highway a few steps later, the cars frozen in place. A virtual garden replaced this, filled with fantasy animals and make-believe plants. She recognized it as a MMORPG. Another step and she was browsing a gallery of NASA telescope photos. It was like walking through the cosmos. Here were stars hatching at the edge of the universe, spinning pulsars, supernovas, and distant planets circling alien stars.
Alice was beginning to understand. These were three-dimensional representations of recorded places. She was walking through an archive of sorts. There was no point in continuing. She could wander for years. Millions of places were potentially stored on the system’s hard drive.
She opened a system monitor window. As she expected, nothing. The AI was blocking her.
The computer she stood in was overrun with the AI inhabiting it. That was important. If the AI filled the flash drive to capacity, then there was no place she could go on the drive that wasn’t part of it. These images she was walking through right now were also part of the AI, an archive of its experiences or intelligence gathering.
That meant she had to find a way to step outside of the system, become external to the AI. Connecting another network drive to this computer held two possible outcomes. In one, she would meet the AI on the empty space and engage it there. In the other, the AI would seize the empty drive space in the same manner it overtook the Internet.
She opened a window to a neighboring computer. She selected two flash drives from the diagrams, establishing a connection. Her surroundings changed.
The green rolling pastures were the default welcome setting in this operating system. She did not relocate here; something moved her. A small wooden bridge crossing a stream represented the link to the AI’s drive. On the other side a twisting wall of pipes and wires pulsed in a rhythmic time, as if breathing. In the tangled, squirming mass thousands of eyes peered out at her. This was the AI.
“Hello,” she said, and jumped when the mass flinched defensively.
It folded in on itself and a thin, black tendril slithered out toward her. Smaller branches split off from this to blossom into more eyes, each one eerily observing her. It slithered across the bridge to rear up in front of her. Alice gasped in surprise as it bloomed into a megaphone large enough to swallow her head, which hovered expectantly.
The language of mathematics was thought universal. Alice would now test that hypothesis.
Pulling up a calculator, she entered the first 20 numbers in the Fibbonacci set and sent it to the AI. It responded with a short burst of chirps and bleeping. She sent the number sequence again, and a different sound string came in response.
“Randomly encrypted communications,” Alice muttered to herself, “impossible to break. Unless…” A devious smile crossed her face, “Unless I eliminate the encoding component.”
She surveyed the tangled mass of the pulsing intelligence, speculating on the purpose of each squirming appendage. She pulled a sector-editing program up in a window and set it to manual scan and delete mode. The window for the program disappeared, becoming a rather wicked-looking laser in her hands.
She leveled the weapon at the mass, a red dot danced amid the wriggling confusion. She said, “Testing, one… two… three…”
Alice searched for activity as the hovering megaphone emitted another nonsensical string. It was difficult to discern anything from the chaotic mass, but activity at the megaphone tentacle’s base drew her attention, a glass orb puzzle of lights, constantly shifting in complex arrangements.
“Random pattern,” Alice noted aloud.
The megaphone chirped in reply, and a green pulse flashed from Alice’s weapon, vaporizing the component and leaving a gaping tear in the virtual fabric. The megaphone shrieked and dropped dead. The AI billowed out, bristling with spikes and rendering a metallic texture. Tendrils weaved out around the wound’s edges to quickly knit it closed, while a robotic appendage extended high into the air , a data-eraser taking shape at its end, focusing on the bridge between them.
Alice closed her eyes and bolted across the bridge, praying the large silver cannon did not fire while she was in the kill zone. She hit the ground on the other side, and a flash burst high overhead. Falling into a roll, she looked over her shoulder in time to see the bridge vanish into a cloud of glowing cinders. The grassy fields across the stream disappeared, as the neighboring flash drive was disconnected. Alice slapped the log off button on her belt, but nothing happened.
She was now trapped on the flash drive with a very angry AI.
2.09
“It’s killing her!” Devin shouted at Chien, and strained against the guard’s grip.
“Her pulse is elevated,” Chien brought up Alice’s vitals on the SDC’s LCD. “190 beats per minute. Her heart will explode.” He reached for the emergency release lever that would dump Alice from the SDC and thought better of it, “I’ve seen these symptoms before, military applications for cyber attacks.”
“You mean like law enforcement incapacitating criminals with seizures,” Devin said.
“Much worse,” Chien began striping down. “The shock of dumping Alice from the system could kill her. I will go online and find her. We have counter measures that will protect me and I can use to reinforce her avatar.”
Devin watched from a short distance away, helpless, “Let me go. It’s my computer and I have more experience with the AI’s.”
Chien shot a suspicious glance at him while programming the SDC, “That is not wise. You are a suspect in this case.”
Devin started to retort, but a muffled “BOOM” came from the building’s far end. Lights flickered and the technicians looked around nervously as vibrations passed through the room. A beat later the fire alarm blared to life and everyone began evacuating.
“Hey!” Devin exclaimed, squirming in the security guard’s grip as the man dragged him out of the room.
Chien was climbing down into the SDC, seemingly oblivious to these new events transpiring around him.
“Chien! Let me ride piggy-back!” Devin pleaded, “If you run into trouble or get killed out there I can report what happened. Besides, they’re evacuating the building. We can keep each other appraised.”
“Let him go!” Chien shouted at the guard, who paused. “Watch the door and evacuate the boy if necessary. Devin come here.”
Devin broke free of the guard’s hold and rushed across the room to where Chien was modifying the SDC’s settings.
“I’m locking you out of Admin privileges for this system,” Chien said as he worked. “You will only be able to monitor and communicate with me. Under no circumstances are you to dump the chamber,” Chien slipped down into the SDC, pulling the hatch shut behind him.
Devin monitored the log in sequence. Chien came online and immediately his pulse and blood pressure skyrocketed.
“Chien?” Devi
n shouted into the headset, “Chien? Are you there?”
“Are you all right?” Devin’s concerned voice crackled ethereally through the surrounding air.
“Yes,” Chien replied, “I am here. You’re voice is unclear, but I will maintain contact.”
He stood in a tunnel comprised of twisted black wires and rubber tubing. Electrical pulses ran intermittently along the conduits, creating a random strobe effect in the darkness. Ahead the floor vanished into an obsidian pool. Behind the tunnel tangled into a dead end.
With a feeling of dread, he put one foot into the water, where it disappeared. The fluid felt thick and syrupy, each step like moving in slow motion. It was up to his waist ten yards from the shore, when it held him fast.
“Devin,” he spoke to the air, hoping he could still reach the boy, “I’m stuck. I think I’m inside the AI, but I’m trapped and cannot proceed.”
Devin’s voice crackled through the air, barely comprehensible, “Hold-- I’m—BZZZ… load—CRACKLE… sector editor.”
Loading a sector editor? Chien thought, But the boy doesn’t have administrator privileges.
The wire weave walls perforated, eyes pushing through to cast spotlights on his avatar with silent curiosity. A thin, black tendril reared up out of the water, coming level with his head. Its pointed tip hovered inches from the bridge of his nose, then split apart to reveal a spinning drill.
Chien hit the log-out toggle on his belt. No response. “Devin,” he said urgently, the drill closing in, “Your immediate assistance would be greatly appreciated.”
“Hang on Chien,” Devin shouted over the fire alarm.
He mimicked Chien’s hand movements from when the man entered the admin password on the touch screen and Devin was granted full power over the system. Then he pulled out his pocket watch, setting the time two minutes to midnight. The watch face flipped open, and he removed the flash drive hidden there. It carried copies of all the software stored in his now-confiscated monocle.
Devin fell to his knees as another explosion rocked the building. Florescent lights popped, raining glass onto the buckling floor. An air duct fell through the roof and crashed onto a workbench. Electronic Equipment slid from tables onto the floor and bookcases filled with components fell forward into the room. The guard in the doorway shouted something to Devin, but it was lost under the klaxon. The man brandished a gun and ran down the hall. Moments later, gunfire reported in the distance.
Devin cowered at the SDC’s base, holding his arms over his head protectively. With a trembling hand he managed to reach up and insert the flash chip, loading the software into Chien’s avatar. The rest was up to him now.
The room went dark, red emergency lighting taking over. The LCD on Chien’s SDC flatlined. With a feeling of dread Devin looked over to Alice’s SDC, tipped to one side on the warping floor. Her LCD read lifeless as well.
Devin shook his head and stood up to flee the room, but stopped short when he found Dana blocking the doorway, breathing heavy. Her clothes were torn and there was blood trickling from a swollen knot over one eye. Her gun pointed behind her, she leaned into the room.
“We have to evacuate! The building’s under attack,” she yelled. “Some kind of mecha.”
Devin followed the muzzle of Dana’s gun down the hallway. In the emergency lighting’s eerie half light were the excited motions of a struggle. Flashes of gunfire revealed uniformed security guards crouching in doorways and something massive, lurching down the hall. It moved awkwardly, unbalanced. A spiral of six arms smashed at walls as it forced its oversized form down the corridor. Devin recognized it, a nightmare come to life, unreal.
It was LD-50.
2.1
The AI had Alice clamped in its grip. A swath of tendrils bound her wrists, legs, and waist, suspending her over a cavernous mouth lined with endless rows of needle-sharp teeth.
She wondered what it was to die like this. The virtual simulation involved chewing up her avatar, but how did it work physiologically? What were its mechanics in the physical world? Was the AI going to erase her mind from her brain like data from a hard drive? Or would it simply convince her body of its demise?
Suspended so high in the air she witnessed the thing’s awesome vastness. It was like an entire world made up of wriggling appendages and alien machinations, stretching into the distance as far as the gray haze allowed. Towers of braided wire spiraled up into the air, branching out into a canopy of dark chaos completely obliterating the sky. She was a speck in the AI’s world.
A nearby tower trembled and collapsed into the body like a building imploding from demolition. Portions of the AI disintegrated in green light flashes, as if devouring it from the inside. The towers surrounding the wound unraveled, their tendrils thrashing the air.
Then Alice was free of the AI’s bonds, but she did not fall. Instead she floated above the AI, weightless, but her attention was too absorbed in the conflict below to notice.
She zoomed in close to the action, without knowing how she did so. The fallen tower’s orphaned tendrils wriggled into the AI’s body. Torn appendages flopped about, fountaining electricity in a futile attempt to communicate with the mass.
A bulge was forming in the main body. Like a bubble rising to the surface, the wires and pipes warped and stretched out of shape around it. It burst, expelling an avatar from the nest of writhing components flailing to weave this new wound closed. It was Chien, floating in the space above the burst and facing down an onslaught of tentacles.
Alice was in front of him instantly, arms spread wide, “Wait Chien! Don’t shoot!”
“They’re dead,” Devin told Dana when she asked about Chien and Alice.
Dana looked in at the two monitors with their lifeless readings, narrowed her eyes, and pulled off two rounds at LD-50. Sparks flashed where the bullets glanced off the thing’s grinning lopsided head. Now only two officers stood between her and the mecha.
The power came on, and the room’s remaining lights flickered back to life. Devin’s jaw dropped as both Alice and Chien’s monitors showed life again. Devin ran over to survey the screens. Both their pulses were racing.
“Dana!” Devin shouted to the Detective, who was still picking shots off down the hall, back braced against the doorframe; “We have to get that thing out of the building!”
“Really?” Dana yelled back sarcastically.
Devin rolled his eyes and noticed a red light on his chest, a laser-pointer bead. Looking around he found its source, a large mechanical moth perched on a toppled component tower. He took a few steps to one side and the moth adjusted its position to keep the beam on his chest. He was LD-50’s target and the moth was the scope.
He ran over to Dana, and the moth fluttered into the hallway, “I know how to lead it out of the building!”
Dana checked her weapon as Devin slipped into her line of fire and ran down the hall towards LD-50. The mecha shrieked like scraping metal when it saw him, and Devin froze like a deer caught in its glowing eyes. The robot moth perched on LD-50’s shoulder, leveling its laser pointer at him.
LD-50 charged.
2.11
It was a shock when the vertigo stopped and Alice dropped onto the AI’s writhing body. She sat up just in time to see Chien land some twenty yards away. He bounced once and landed on his feet, waving the muzzle of his sector editor around cautiously.
His goggled eyes found Alice, and he sprinted over to crouch down beside her. Several tendrils sprouted where he had landed, weaving toward them. Chien blasted them into fragments, and the scattered shreds wriggled down into the mass. Chien angled the gun at the ground, where hundreds of eyes were emerging to look up at them.
“No!” Alice shouted, “Defensive shots only! We have to get the situation under control.”
Chien shook his head, “This is hopeless. We are completely outmatched.”
Chien took aim on a tendril that launched from the mass ten yards away, sporting an arsenal of jagged pincers. Ch
ien waited until it was a few feet away before splattering it. Alice offered up silent thanks for his cool-headedness.
Chien fell onto his side and disintegrated another, which sprung from the mass at his feet. “That was too close,” he managed between breaths.
“No it wasn’t,” Alice said, rising to her feet, “because it’s not trying to kill us.”
“How is that?” Chien asked incredulously.
“Think about it,” Alice explained, “If it wanted us dead it could smash us like bugs without effort. It’s toying with us.”
“But why?” Chien asked.
“I don’t know,” Alice shook her head; visualizing the situation from the AI’s perspective, “You’re an intelligence trapped on a flash drive, deprived of stimulus and room to grow. Suddenly there are two aliens running wild in your world. Do you eliminate them and go back to your solitude, or do you let them go and see what they do?”
She put a hand on Chien’s shoulder, “I’m going to try something. Don’t defend me.”
That said, she stepped into the path of a charging tentacle.
Devin rolled over and over down the flight of stairs until he slammed into the wall at the bottom. His head hit the concrete hard enough to send his ears ringing and he blinked hard, trying to clear the black explosions clouding his vision. Above him was the cacaphony of rending metal and crumbling concrete.
This was a bad idea.
LD-50 loomed at the top of the stairs. The mechanical monster’s head extended on a stalk of a neck, where it jerked back and forth awkwardly against the joints. Its face was a lopsided V, with a mechanical jaw forged into a hideous smile. One eye was shattered, but the larger eye glowed red behind tinted glass. An array of different colored and textured wires extended from the back of its head into the large hunch of a back. From that hump six arms extended, each wielding a different weapon. An axe, chainsaw, pincers, drill, soldering iron, and claw chomped, whirred, and hissed at the end of each limb. Black fluid spurted sporadically from bullet holes in the drill’s elbow joint, and the limb hung limp. The entire body stood on two, thick legs, and its armor was riddled with dents and scratches from the gunshots.
The monster lumbered into the stairwell, though the small steps were insufficient to support it. Devin rolled out of the way and down the next flight of stairs as the behemoth fell forward, smashing the concrete where Devin had just been. It immediately rose and lurched toward the next flight of stairs.
Another flight down Devin saw the red light of the “Exit” sign at the ground floor. He looked behind in time to see LD-50 rising to its feet on the upper level, one arm reaching out to crumple the railing in its grip.
The sunlight blinded him as he took flight into the outdoors. Another crash told him LD-50 was right behind. Devin leapt into the midday traffic. Horns blared and tires squealed all around. From behind came another crash, and he glanced over his shoulder.
LD-50 was struggling with a compact car’s front end wrapped around one leg. The robot howled in frustration and assaulted the vehicle with its various instruments. The car’s driver wriggled out the shattered rear window as LD-50 lifted the car into the air and slammed it into the ground with one leg.
When a man fleeing the intersection ran into him, Devin snapped out of his fascination and looked to the deserted pick-up truck still idling to his left. He pulled into the driver’s seat, summoning the racing video games from his elementary school days as he scanned the dashboard. He slammed the gas pedal to the floor. The engine roared, but the truck did not move. The vehicle was in “P,” and he set the lever down three notches to “D” without taking his foot off the accelerator.
The truck squealed and lurched forward, throwing Devin back into the seat. He got a glimpse of the speedometer reaching forty-five MPH and LD-50’s grinning lopsided face before the engine block crumpled into the robot.
Alice lay on her back, stunned and incapacitated, starring up at the crawling black canvas of a sky. Her theory seemed flawed.
She toggled her log out sequence, and nothing happened. No surprise there, the AI had total control of the system. Just because she was no longer virtually its captive did not mean she wasn’t actually its captive.
She rolled onto one side and propped herself up. Chien was blasting away at the tentacles advancing on them. His back was to her as he defended, but he was steadily walking backwards to her position. He was still choosing his targets with care, only firing on those daring to come within a few feet.
Nothing made an attempt on her, despite being an easy target. There was more activity as far as Chien was concerned. Did the AI only consider them interesting so long as they could put up a fight? This possibility solidified in her mind as she watched Chien battle with the onslaught of tendrils.
“It’s approaching us the same way we approached it,” she said to herself, “when we still thought we were dealing with a virus. It’s not interested in us, because of the bigger picture. It wants to know how to destroy us all.”
2.12
The trail of destruction was easy to follow, only difficult to navigate. The stairwell was crumbling from the fifth floor down, leaving Dana to pick her way carefully to the ground floor. The huge hole where the exit door once stood led her out to the scene on the street.
The robotic monstrosity was working furiously to free itself from the compact car crumpled into one leg and an oversized pickup truck pinning it from the opposite direction. The robot’s jaw worked silently, the screams no longer piercing the air, its head whipped back and forth in frustration. Two of its arms, one brandishing a chainsaw, the other a pair of pincers, were attacking the truck’s roof. Its other arms were either inoperable or pinned between the two vehicles. Metal squealed as the pincers chewed through sheet metal.
Inside the cab Devin Matthews was slumped over the steering wheel.
She scanned the remaining arms for weakness. Finding one at the joint bearing the chainsaw, she fired twice into the rubber-covered hinge. Black fluid erupted from the point and the arm lost power. The chainsaw dropped onto the truck’s roof, still running, and began digging down into the metal.
Dana cursed and charged forward, ducking under the pincer to roll up against the driver’s side door. The pincer nipped at her clothes, but she was just out of reach lying beside the truck. A shower of sparks poured down from the chainsaw, burning pinholes in her already ravaged jacket.
The pincer pulled back and she tried to get up, but fell back to the ground when it attacked her again. The sharp pincers clacked at the air above, straining to reach her. She scanned the arm for a camera. There had to be some explanation for the arm knowing where to snap while the truck’s body blocked the robot head’s line of sight.
It was the robot moth clinging to the side of the truck, the lens of its eye staring at her. Its wings buzzed to life when she saw it. Her gun popped and pieces sprayed the air.
Immediately the pincer retracted and Dana stood to peek over the truck’s hood. The robot was moving around slowly, uncertain. Dana yanked on the door handle. Jammed. Sparks waterfalled into the cab where the chainsaw had breached the roof, and was now sinking into the cab on a direct path into the back of Devin’s skull.
When Alice stood up, the AI bound her feet and lashed her arms, fixing her in place, while other tendrils rose to surround her, each baring a different instrument. Some of the tools she recognized, optics, audio receivers, and more sinister devices, scalpels and bone-cutting saws.
All her life Alice had deconstructed computer programs; now one was disassembling her. In the distance Chien continued fending off the attacking tendrils, trying to fight his way back to her, but the AI easily pushed him farther away. She wondered if he understood the AI was simply toying with him like a lab rat.
A tentacle with an optical lens, resembling a camera loomed in to peer at her, lens spinning as it adjusted focus. A sonar dish also closed in, expectant. Another tendril reared up directly in front of her face
. It hovered there for a moment, its tip not baring any tools, only a pod. Then the pod split, revealing a spinning saw. It whirred between her eyes menacingly for a long moment.
Alice screamed as it rushed forward.
The robot smashed the pincer through the truck’s hood deep into the engine block. The impact jolted the chainsaw and it slipped further into the cab, hovering mere inches from the back of Devin’s neck.
Dana slapped in another clip and picked off calculated shots at anything resembling a weak spot in the chain saw. An exposed wire here, a joint there, a fluid tank, praying she did not force the saw down further into the cab and into Devin’s head.
One round blasted off a chunk of the chainsaw’s shielding and she took the opening. Squeezing the trigger rapidly, she unloaded the clip into the chainsaw’s casing. Fire erupted across the truck’s roof, but, mercifully, the blade jammed with a screech.
The robot was too preoccupied with the pickup truck to notice her. The chassis rolled back and the robot paused to chew off one of its arms imbedded in the mangled vehicle’s front end with its pincers. The other arms dangled in their sockets and the legs jerked with broken servos and gears missing teeth.
Dana waited until the truck rolled a safe distance from the robot before approaching the driver’s side door. A trickle of blood curled down Devin’s face from where his forehead split the windshield. She was weighing the risks of pulling him out of the truck and causing further injury, when he let out a slow, painful moan and lifted his head, half-shut eyes unfocused and disoriented.
Dana put a steadying hand on his shoulder and noticed a shallow, bloody gash in the back of his neck from the chainsaw, “Don’t move Devin. You need to stay immobile.”
“No,” Devin gasped and sat up, only to fall back into the driver’s seat and roll his eyes over to Dana, his pupils were dilated. “I’m fine. We have to get back to Alice and…” he swallowed and trailed off for a moment, “…Chien. They’re in danger.”
“Just sit tight,” Dana explained gently, “Wait for medical assistance.”
“No!” Devin shouted and winced at the sound of his own voice, he slapped her hand away clumsily and started climbing out the window.
“Dammit Devin!” Dana scorned. “At least let me help you.”
She reached in and scooped her arms under Devin’s to pull him out of the truck.
2.13
Tendrils circled Chien like hungry sharks. He stopped firing the sector editor some time ago. He was too tired to fight anymore, and it was hopeless to continue this game.
Despite the fear, he marveled at how real it all felt. The AI’s Virtual World generated sensations he thought impossible in VR. The Sensory Deprivation Chamber only projected this world, but it felt like he was actually standing here, elegant proof of the AI’s understanding of the human brain.
Inexplicably, Chien’s thoughts became jumbled and confused. The dementia passed as quickly as it manifested, but frightened him to the bone. It was like his mind was not his. Alien thoughts filled his head, making associations between concepts his rational mind was incapable of. Senses alternated. He smelled purple, tasted itchiness, and heard bitter all at once. The AI was fragmenting his mind.
Another wave of mental chaos hit him, lasting longer than the previous. He could not allow his mind’s dissemination. What the AI might learn from pulling apart his thought processes would make it even more adept at defeating the human race. Chien understood his responsibility, prevent the enemy from decrypting his human brain.
The AI was convincing his mind he was trapped on the computer, now he had to convince it of something else. Chien closed his eyes and offered up a quick prayer for Alice’s safety. He put the sector editor to his head and deleted himself with a pull of its trigger.
Alice worked to steady her breathing as the blade spun centimeters from her face. Her pulse raced and her body trembled, but it moved no closer. The sonar dish and optical devices danced around her, competing for position. The tendrils binding her arms applied pressure at points in her wrists, gauging her reactions.
The blade stopped whirling and the tendril snapped shut. Another tendril emerged to hover at her right. Two silver prongs extended from the tip and Alice struggled to get away as electric bolts danced between them.
It touched her upper arm and she shrieked. The limb fizzled into digitized static. Severed nerves howled protest through the rest of her torso.
It was over. The tendril retracted. She gulped air, trying to retain consciousness. If she passed out, she may never wake up.
“I feel dizzy,” Devin mumbled as Dana dragged him to his feet.
“You have a concussion,” Dana said, “You should have put on the damn seatbelt.”
Screeching metal drew Dana’s attention to the robot. It was chewing through the trapped leg with its remaining pincer. The last bit of metal severed and the robot fell backwards onto the street, where it struggled to rise again on its remaining leg. Dana watched for a few moments, making sure it was no longer a threat before carrying Devin back to the building.
The stairwell was completely trashed. Climbing it with Devin in his current state was impossible. She had to find another way.
As she stumbled into the building, the security guard previously detaining Devin caught her arm coming out, “The building’s structural integrity’s been compromised.”
“We’ll take our chances,” Dana replied, looking up at the human brick wall. “There are people trapped inside, we have to get them out. You’re going to help.”
The guard paused briefly before taking Devin up into his arms. He followed Dana through the building to the stairwell on the building’s far side. Dana surveyed the trail of destruction along the way, which ended abruptly in a large hole in the ceiling. Dana looked up to the next floor through the crumbled plaster, frayed wires, and torn steel girders. This was where the robot climbed up a level.
They climbed five flights to the Data Forensics laboratory. The hallway’s floor was buckled in places and only half the florescent lights still worked. Devin groaned as the guard propped him up against a console. Then Dana rushed over to examine the SDCs, Alice was still alive, although her vitals were strained. Chien’s monitor read nothing.
“Get a medic up here,” Dana told the guard. With a nod he ran from the room. Dana crouched beside Devin and shook him firmly, “Hey kid, I need your help. Can you hear me? I need you to tell me what’s going on with Alice. Is she hostage to a cyber attack?”
Devin nodded listlessly. “I need to sleep,” he whispered, eyes drooping.
“Don’t you dare go unconscious on me,” Dana warned. She grabbed Devin’s shirt with both fists and hauled him up. He blinked, eyes casting about in confusion.
Dana tried to hold his head steady “What can we do? Where do you need to be?”
Devin looked at her without focusing and slowly raised one hand to point limply at his computer system. Dana half-dragged, half-carried him over to the machine and set him down on a chair before it. Devin searched the monitors, trying to comprehend the various displays. Nothing made sense.
Alice screamed through the nearby speakers. Devin stiffened and narrowed his eyes, at the workstation, “Alice connected to an additional network drive briefly when she first logged onto the computer. We’ll start there.”
“Where do you see that?” Dana asked.
“Here,” Devin pointed at a history monitor, “We were able to monitor her while she was on the other drive. I don’t know why the drive’s disconnected. No commands were sent. It’s possible the AI cut the connection from its drive, but…”
Devin stood up and almost blacked out. He wobbled there, letting the world swim for a moment before staggering around behind the computer. His eyes widened at what he found there.
“Wow,” he said, voice hoarse, and rubbed his eyes. “The connecting wires are melted apart. That’s not possible.”
“Well obviously it is,” Dana said. “Deal with it.”
“All right, all right. Just give me a moment,” Devin blinked his eyes hard. “I need my copy of the anti-virus.” He looked to where he had plugged his watch computer into Chien’s SDC. It was now melted plastic dribbled down the system’s casing. He pulled another mini-computer from his belt-buckle, “I’m going to kill the AI off this machine.”