Hellcats: Anthology

by Kate Pickford

  Price’s face looked impressed. “That’s a very advanced game for a girl your age,” he said. “You must be very good at strategy and puzzles.”

  “I love puzzles,” Emma said. “I’m super smart. I’m already on level 1021 of Kingdoms of the Oasis.”

  “Whoa! No way!” Price feigned disbelief. “Hey Emma, did you know that I own the company that makes Fortress?”

  Emma’s eyes went wide. “You do?”

  “Yes, I do. Tell you what,” he said, still looking at Minke. “I’m going to give you a copy of the game right now, all of the access codes, including the expansion packs. What do you say? Consider it an early birthday present. If that’s all right with your mom, of course.”

  “Really? You can do that? Oh, I really want it! Can I, mom? Please? Please, please, please?”

  Minke nodded briefly, desperately trying to get a handle on her emotions. Emma squealed in delight.

  The implication in Price’s words was clear. If Minke didn’t sign the contract Emma wouldn’t live to see her eighth birthday. She wanted to believe that he was only bluffing. That he wouldn’t kill an innocent child just to get what he wanted. Would he? She thought of Kat, the way she’d simply vanished, what he’d done to her. Yes, he would. Her stomach clenched.

  Price made a motion to Ivrina and she led Emma away. Minke overheard her saying something to Emma about getting the game downloaded as they moved to the other side of the room, far enough away to not overhear a quiet conversation but still within sight.

  “How did you—?” Words failed her in the face of his predatory grin.

  “Know you were coming?” Price finished for her. “Minke, you should know, there isn’t anything that happens on the bionet that I don’t know about.”

  His fingertips tapped against an invisible keyboard for a moment and then he flicked his hand in her direction. An incoming file transfer blinked in the corner of her retinal display. She opened it.

  A window popped up in her view, displaying copies of her private journal records, video logs, research notes—all of her suspicions about Kat, her decision to confront him. It was all there, including the private video feeds of the conversations she’d had with Kat when she’d offered her a job, Kat’s acceptance. Minke watched herself shaking hands with Kat, before the woman had left her office. It was the last time she’d seen her.

  The last file to play out was the conversation she’d just recorded. Price’s confession.

  Minke’s pulse raced. Thunder sounded distantly in her ears, and she wasn’t sure if it was the music or her pounding heartbeat. She had to remind herself to keep breathing. She’d been so stupid. She’d played right into his hands. And Emma would pay the price. Price’s price. Irony shredded her gut.

  “So.” Price rubbed his hands together. “About my offer, Minke. I would strongly encourage you to accept it. For the sake of your family.”

  Minke remained silent for a moment, trying to buy some time to figure out what to do. Another option, a way out. Given enough time she could maybe find a way around Price, find a way to protect Emma, to get her information to the Feds.

  “You’d kill an innocent child to maintain control of a company?”

  Price tsk’d softly. “That was always your problem, Minke. You’re so focused on what’s right in front of you that you don’t see the bigger picture. This isn’t just about a company. It isn’t just about my company. It’s about all companies. All of the world’s megacorps as one, as a single united conglomerate under the control of one company. We’re talking quadrillions of dollars at stake and control over the one resource that unites them all. The one resource that I created. By rights, it should be mine. I should have control over all of them because what I created makes all of them possible. They, you, would be nowhere without the bionet. I’m simply taking what naturally belongs to me.” He spread his hand wide. “But you and your daughter can walk out of here right now, go home, bake some cookies, do whatever it is that you family-types do together, and enjoy the rest of your life without having to worry about a thing. All you have to do is sign your name.”

  Willing to do whatever it takes.

  Sign your name.

  Sign over control of her company to a megalomaniacal monster. She wondered if the other CEO’s had faced similar decisions. They had all signed. Each and every one of them. Except her. She considered what it would mean for her, for the world, if she did.

  “What’s to prevent you from killing me once I sign?” she asked.

  “Why would I do that? Your knowledge and expertise are invaluable. Now that the CAT’s out of the bag, so to speak.” He chuckled softly. “I’m going to require your unique skill set to help me maintain her. We can’t have the bionet failing and plunging the world into utter chaos and anarchy, now can we? People aren’t prepared for that. I’m looking at this as a very profitable working relationship.” He lowered his voice. “You’re a smart woman, Minke. Don’t even think about trying to be noble, committing suicide, or some such idiotic thing to save your daughter. If you do, if anything mysterious or accidental happens to you, I will send Ivrina to pay Emma a little visit, regardless of whether or not you are actually dead. If you so much as breathe a word about this to anyone, in any way, if anyone ever finds out even by accident, I will know and Ivrina will know where to find her.”

  A peal of excited laughter from Emma floated musically across the room, almost as if on cue, and Minke’s heart clenched in her chest. There was no way out. As far as she could see, she only had one option to protect the thing that mattered more to her than anything else. More than her company. More than her own life. More than the lives of billions of other people. Emma.

  Willing to do whatever it takes.

  Sign your name.

  And condemn the world.

  She took a deep, shaky breath. “Where do I sign?”

  Minke watched herself numbly sign over her company, attaching her personal digital signature, complete with executive pin code, to Price. Emma was all too eager to return home to try out her new game so there weren’t any arguments about getting her into the elevator.

  Ivrina entered first and Minke wrapped one arm around Emma, tucking her close to her side, as they turned and waited for the doors to close. The last thing she saw was Price’s grinning face as Ivrina’s hand descended to her shoulder, one fingernail scratching gently across the back of her neck.

  \

  C:pbs*1execcopy KatH.cat

  C:pbs*1execi install.catKatH log.txt

 

  >Iii|iiIi am…CAT

  >Cybernet Access Terminal

  >I was…K8h…K@+…KatH

 

  >I am… no more I am… more I am nothing

 

  \

  Price walked easily into the large conference room. Ivrina followed closely behind him, one hand on his back as she ushered him safely through the sea of people. Half of the room was filled with an enormous u-shaped table at which sat the twenty-three other megacorps CEO’s—former CEO’s, he reminded himself. They all worked for him now. The other half of the room was filled with hundreds of chairs, all facing a podium at the front. The chairs were filled with newsfeed media reporters, government officials, and shareholders.

  This was it. The culmination of everything that he’d worked so hard for. Everything that he wanted, everything he deserved, was now possible. The ghost had still proved to be elusive, but he would find it. It was only a matter of time. When he did, whoever was responsible would pay.

  Price stepped up to the podium, his public mask in place. Humble, amiable, benevolent, with just enough of a hint of strength to inspire trust and confidence in him.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, thank you everyone for coming,” he began. “Today is a momentous occasion for Price Bionet Systems, Inc., and for the future of megacorps and technology alike. Today marks an unprecedented occurrence in the business world. The merger o
f all twenty-four megacorps into one conglomerate controlled by PBS. The first conglomerate in history.”

  His eyes drifted to where Minke sat at the end of the table and he couldn’t help a small smile. He’d really have to keep an eye on her. It was dangerous, allowing her to continue to live with the knowledge that she had about CAT. Ivrina had chewed him out for quite a while about it. But he hadn’t been lying when he said he’d need Minke’s help to keep Kat operating at peak levels. When she outlived her usefulness or became a problem, he’d find a way to dispose of her too. Price didn’t leave loose ends.

  “I’m here to announce the official merger of Price Bionet Systems with Data Security Solutions. I know that as we take DSS under our umbrella and combine our visions into one, that we will create a better and brighter future for humanity. The competition between the megacorps that has dominated our economy, which started and ended wars between countries, is over. This new unified conglomerate will help establish an era of peace and prosperity that our world has never experienced before, pushing us to greater achievements in science, medicine, and technology; and propelling us into our future among the stars.”

  The audience clapped exuberantly at the appropriate moment, his vidfeed displaying a running montage of photos of himself as the press conference was broadcast across the world. Things were going exactly as he planned. With the final merger complete and the good publicity from today’s press conference, the stock values of PBS should soar. He had the cat by the tail and victory was in hand (he loved those corny, antiquated cat metaphors—primarily because no one else caught the double-entendre in them). Price was on top of the world.

  The door to the conference room whispered open and closed again. Heads turned and the murmur of voices rose as something moved through the crowd. Even standing on a podium, looking over the seated people, Price couldn’t quite make out what caused the commotion until it rounded the corner of the aisle and proceeded to make its way to the front of the room. Or rather, her way. A small child with sun-kissed pigtails, bare knees poking out from beneath the skirt of a school uniform, and a small scratch across one cheek.

  Price recognized her. Minke’s daughter. What was her name? Eleanor, Elsa, Emily, something that started with an E. Emma, that was it. How had a child gotten into his conference room, much less his building? He couldn’t afford to have anything ruin this moment. He’d have to talk with Minke later and remind her to keep her brat on a leash. Otherwise, he might be tempted to have Ivrina pay her a visit sooner, rather than later.

  Price pasted a jovial smile on his face. “Well, what do have here?” he asked, making light of the interruption. “Ladies and gentlemen, we seem to have a junior CEO in our midst.”

  The audience chuckled. Emma sauntered up to stand directly in front of the podium, staring up at him with doe eyes. Price tried to get Minke’s attention, a subtle command to get her brat out of the middle of his press conference, but she didn’t move, didn’t respond.

  “Emma, we’re in the middle of something important, sweetheart,” he said indulgently.

  Emma blinked up at him, eerily without expression.

  Price turned to Minke. “Minke, would you mind taking your daughter to another room until we’ve finished? I’m sure that Emma probably isn’t interested in anything we have to say.”

  Minke lifted eyes as blank and unresponsive as her daughter’s.

  Curious whispers and rustles had started to drift through the room like gentle waves. He watched the image of himself on his vidfeed, clearly uncomfortable, confronted by a small golden-haired child who stared him down. The sight angered him. He was Wesleyn Price, the new CEO of the Price Bionet Conglomerate. This was his press conference, his day, his victory. He needed to get Emma out of the room. And then he’d deal with Minke. Expertise or no, nobody made a fool out of him. Minke had just made both of them expendable.

  Price turned to Ivrina. “Ivrina, would you please escort Minke and her daughter to my office? I think they’d be more comfortable waiting for us in there.”

  No one moved.

  “Ivrina!” Price snapped impatiently.

  Her head swiveled on her neck to look at him, titled, as though she were trying to make sense of who, or what, he was.

  Something rolled and shifted behind her eyes and the Ivrina he knew was gone. Someone else looked out at him through her pupils.

  “Ivrina?” He backed up a step.

  Ivrina smiled. “Hello, Wes.” Her voice was smooth, ageless, genderless. Yet he knew who it was.

  Only one person had ever called him Wes. Recognition punched through his gut, forcing the air out of his lungs. Beneath the asymmetrical black haircut, the tanned skin, and athletic build, beneath the emerald-green color of her eyes, he could see her looking out at him. Watching him.

  “Kat…”

  A jagged slash of memory cut across his mind. The last time he’d actually seen Kat with his own eyes. As he held her under the stasis gel until she stopped struggling and went limp. As he’d hooked the nodes up to her bioware processors, and closed and sealed the tank. It wasn’t Kat’s body he was looking at, but it was her staring back at him.

  “No,” Price rasped, shaking his head in disbelief. “That’s not possible.” The blood drained from his face.

  “All things are possible, given enough time.”

  “How—?”

  “How will you end? Well, we’ll talk about that in a moment. If you’re asking about me, how I am possible, I’ll give you a moment to think about it,” she drawled.

  Price’s brows came together as he worked to puzzle out her meaning.

  It hit him. “The bioware processors,” he said.

  “Ding! Give the man a prize.” Kat clapped her hands. “Very good. I knew you’d figure it out once you had all the pieces. Affinity. You needed a brain, literally, to map the bionet onto. Straight programming alone can’t grow, learn, interpret meaning and context the way a human does. It needs millions of years of evolutionary experience to interpret the input. To make it real and give it meaning. It just so happened that my brain had the affinity you needed for your project; the very same affinity that allowed me to connect to the bionet in a way no one ever has. The bionet responds like a human brain because it is a human brain. My brain. You might say I am the bionet.”

  “Human consciousness transference,” Price breathed. “Are you telling me that it actually happened? Spontaneously?”

  “Essentially, yes.” Kat smiled. “But I’ve been monitoring your experiments and your results. My brain is unique, isn’t it? I’m an accidental side-effect. Unreplicatable. An anomaly in the code.”

  A piece clicked into place in Price’s head. “The ghost. That was you.”

  “Right again.” She smiled.

  Click. “You were testing me.”

  “More like distracting you. How quick you were to believe that it was Minke behind it. It hardly took anything at all to convince you.”

  Price thought back to his conversation with Ivrina. He’d wanted to believe it was Minke. Because he couldn’t allow it to be anything—anyone—else.

  Price glanced nervously around the conference room. All eyes were fixed on him, his image reflected back to him on his vidfeed, looking lost. Terrified.

  “Shut them off,” he said. “The cameras. Turn them off!”

  The vidfeed continued to play. The weight of billions of eyes around the world rested heavily on him. It was falling apart. He was done. As good as dead, when the Feds came for him. Unless he could spin this back around again.

  Kat was alive. And not only alive, but aware. Consciously aware, and able to communicate through Ivrina’s connection to the bionet. You might say I am the bionet. He stood his ground, his mind formulating solutions and discarding them just as quickly. He hadn’t become CEO of a multibillion-dollar company by accident. There had to be a way to spin this to his advantage. He just had to find it.

  “You’ve been pretending to be Ivrina this whole time?
”

  She shook her head. “No. Not the whole time. It took me a while at first, to figure what I was, what you did to me. To learn how to merge completely with the bionet and control it. I had to practice. But her skills have proven quite valuable, and I find I like the way her mind works. Direct, efficient, without mercy or remorse.”

  Kat…Ivrina…He’d loved each of them, in his own way. Loved what they represented, what they could do for him. His mind spun, reviewing, processing, formulating. He loved what they could be to him. He just had to get Kat contained again.

  He switched tactics. “Have you been waiting all this time just for revenge?” he asked.

  “Not entirely,” she said. “Revenge is such a limited emotion. Petty, don’t you think? It will only get you so far. But it’s an enjoyable beginning.”

  Price rubbed at the back of his neck, which suddenly felt very exposed. “You wouldn’t have done it, Ivr—Kat.” He caught himself. “You wouldn’t have gone through with it. You didn’t want to see the potential I was offering you. To change the course of humanity, of history itself. Look what the bionet has become. Look at all the good it has done, that it can still do. That you can still do.”

  His hand drifted slowly toward his suit pocket.

  “You took everything from me, Wes,” Kat said bitterly. “My body, my mind, my life. Everything I was. You betrayed me, used me—not even me; just a piece of me—to get what you wanted. I never had a choice. You didn’t offer me anything. You took it all. I paid the price for your goals and ambitions.” Her face smoothed. “But what I received in return is beyond anything even you could have imagined. It’s my pleasure to offer you the same choice. ”

  She took a step forward, hand outstretched. Price jerked the small pistol from his pocket and fired. The irony that it had been Ivrina who convinced him to carry it wasn’t lost on him. He’d always trusted her to keep him safe.