Tris blinked. “Yeah. That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Yes. The woman before you is Tris Jameson. She is quite human.” The boom swung around, retracting and extending in a way that made the head end seem to glide diagonally across the room in seconds. A bank of nine flat-panel monitors on the wall arranged to form a single, large display projected an image of a nude white-haired woman who quite resembled Tris if she’d been a bit more muscular and about two inches taller. “Doctor Jameson was the lead architect on another project for DARPA to create android soldiers capable of infiltration, assassination, and hand-to-hand combat. I am incapable of determining the logical reason behind it, so I calculate that his motivation to run this age progression of Tris came from reasons of pure sentimentality. He made them look like he thought you would look in your middle twenties.”
“That doesn’t explain the whiter-than-white thing.” Kevin cocked an eyebrow.
“At the time,” said Dad-AI, “they had been experimenting with various chemical agents to create a gel that could freeze evenly for cryogenic stasis and protect the body within from crystallization. Early cryogenics processes suffered from a fatal build-up of ice crystals in the blood and tissues. They knew this gel had… bleaching properties that affected the subjects’ DNA. I believe that Doctor Jameson made the Persephone androids white with white hair because the image of test subjects had struck a chord with him somehow. I do not believe at the time he had expected Tris to be exposed to the same chemical bath.”
Tris buried her face in her hands, breathing in and out in slow, measured sips of air. “That’s why the former Army people in Dallas knew what a Persephone was… they were around before the war.”
“A few. Only a handful were activated. Most remained in storage in the DARPA facility, never used.” Dad-AI glided back over as the display showing the lifelike 3D model of a theoretical adult Tris shut down. “Your father had you removed from stasis in 2050 when he was sixty-one years old. From the time you were five until the age of nine, you lived with him in the nascent Enclave.”
Tris stared into space. Her entire life, the Enclave city felt like she’d been trapped in a dream of a strange alien world. The memory of an incessant doorbell dragging her nine-year-old self out of bed unfurled in her mind. She’d trudged in her clingy one-piece nightsuit down the hallway to answer the door and stared up at two Enclave security people. They had seemed so sad for her. As soon as she’d seen their faces, she’d started to cry, knowing something bad had happened. “I remember the security officers finding me home alone. Dad didn’t come home after a late night at the lab.”
“He was assassinated that night.” Dad-AI drooped; the synthesized voice came so close to human, sorrow sounded clear in each word. “Do you remember where they took you?”
Tris looked at her knees. “They told me to get dressed, and then they drove me to the clinic. They said my father had become very ill and I needed to be checked to make sure I didn’t have the same sickness.”
“A believable enough lie.”
“I…” Memories she’d lost track of came swirling back. Cold fake leather on her back. Rubber-gloved hands sticking little electrodes to her bare chest. “They told me to take my clothes off and lie on this table so they could scan me. This woman put electrodes on my chest and head… so many of them on my head.” Bright white light ate the scene, and another woman in a black jumpsuit smiled at her. The uncomfortable procedure table had changed into a bed like magic. The electrodes gone, replaced with a little hospital gown. “I… don’t know how I wound up in a bed.”
“Mmm.” Dad-AI grumbled. “In 2055, you were returned to stasis as a nine-year-old while they prepared replacement parents for you.”
“P-prepared?” Tris shivered at the thought of the kind of people who could toss a newly-orphaned little girl into a freezer while they cooked up a new set of parents. “Why? Why didn’t they just give me to new parents right away?”
Dad-AI glided side to side in a slight arc, a head wag of sorts. “I have no way to know that, as my biological originator had ceased to exist at that point in time. They selected a young couple who had recently been denied a pairing because their genetic material was needed elsewhere. Amid the deceit, they said there had been an error and the two would be allowed to pair as they requested.”
Tris frowned. “They almost never let people marry for love.”
“When the girl next door is your second cousin, you gotta be careful,” muttered Kevin.
“Ass.” Tris poked him in the side.
Dad-AI wobbled up and down as if chuckling. “The man may be indelicate, but he is not incorrect. This couple were told they needed to have another scan to confirm that there had been an error.”
“… and they put them in the freezer again,” said Tris.
“Correct. They harvested genetic material and put them into stasis. While in stasis, they believed they had left the procedure room within twenty minutes. “In truth, they were in virtual reality where they believed they had a baby daughter… you.”
Tris blinked. “I thought they were being cruel to me on purpose… like everyone was lying. They really had no idea you were―I mean Dad was real.”
“They did not.” Dad-AI sagged with a labored whine of hydraulics. “After nine years, they arranged for the artificial version of you to experience a mild medical condition which required hospitalization for a brief period… ‘for testing.’ You were thawed, and placed in a real hospital bed where you woke up, not having any idea how much time had passed. Your parents were removed from stasis without their knowledge and placed in the bedroom of a house painstakingly arranged to match the simulation.”
Tris’ mind leapt back to that day. Everyone acted as though she’d been sick. No one remembered Dad. The people who’d shown up to take her home… They both seemed stiff and sore. Oh, God… it’s true… “Why… why did everyone act like you never existed?”
The bot’s main iris lens narrowed to a sinister purple dot. “They attempted to implant a memory overlay on you that would have created the same false life as your adoptive parents believed. The Council of Four wanted to clear your memories of me as a security precaution. I did not allow that to happen.” The AI sighed. “It is quite fortunate that Yana and Marcus only believed you to have suffered delusions and not taken their concerns to the authorities. Had the Council become aware your memory modification had failed… they may have taken more drastic measures.”
Tris found herself crying in silence. She’d not quite ‘hated’ them for most of her life, more resented… for thinking her crazy and making her ignore Dad. It hadn’t been their fault after all. They really did believe her to be their biological daughter. “Why am I so important?”
“Hey wait a second.” Kevin snatched the printed photo. “She has white hair in this picture. If we’re supposed to believe that she was born before the nukes, how did she look like that back then?”
“Tris was a platinum blonde.” Dad-AI sprouted a narrow metal appendage, which pointed an intense, albeit tiny, spotlight on the paper. “The printout is not the best quality. The toner has been sitting idle for fifty years or so, and the light in here is… poor.”
Under the spotlight, the little girl in the picture had a hint of blonde in her hair and a trace of color in her skin, neither of which present-day Tris possessed.
She exhaled. “I… don’t know how to feel. W-why am I so important?”
“I do not know the full extent of their knowledge of you, me, or the risk you represent. However, considering you were born in 2014, I imagine they are most interested in your DNA. They also likely fear my biological predecessor may have left sleeper programs in the systems that you would be able to access.” Dad-AI glided to Tris’ left and activated another set of monitors, which streamed with program code. Black textual ants raced across white background. “The Enclave does not know that I, that is to say the artificial intelligence of Doctor Jameson, exist. I inserted the messa
ge into Nathan’s music files hoping you would be able to find it. I was unable to do more to stop them from putting the explosive in you, though I did manage to reprogram it not to detonate until five seconds after exposure to air.”
At the mere thought of what that charge would’ve done to her, she lurched, dry heaving. One of the wheels on her chair cracked.
“I have the means to shut down the production and distribution system for Agent-94, or ‘The Virus,’ as you know it. However, I do not have direct access to the main Enclave network. There is no hardline connectivity between the old Stanford network and the modern systems. I have been operating via an unsecured backdoor through an ancient tape drive, but they have been upgrading and I am no longer able to establish connectivity. I need you to create a router to connect the two networks.”
“And how the heck am I going to do that?” Tris lifted her head, wanting to crawl off somewhere, wrap herself around a stuffed animal, and cry until everything just stopped mattering.
Hydraulics whining, Dad-AI swiveled around the room, activating panel after panel of displays. All the supercomputer towers lit up from inside with a cobalt blue glow. After a minute or so of frantic zipping about, the boom extended the ‘head’ close to Tris once more. “Once you create a path for me to connect to the Enclave’s current systems, I will be able to eliminate the Virus, their capacity to manufacture it, and all records of how to make it. However, I need you to remove a security protocol I―Doctor Jameson rather―put around certain file structures within the Enclave system. I have already created programs that will do everything that needs to be done safely, but your genetic fingerprint is coded to what Doctor Jameson named the Eden Protocol. You are the only one who can open it.”
Tris shivered and looked up at the metallic box hovering over her, unsure which of its five lens ‘eyes’ she should stare into. “Me?”
Kevin folded his arms. “No wonder Nathan wants you dead so bad.”
24
The Next One
Abby lay curled on her side facing out into the room, Zoe’s arm around her. The younger girl’s breath warmed the back of her head. It felt like an hour since they’d gotten into bed and the adults left. She didn’t dare close her eyes. Although they said only Zara would go near a fallen drone, the crash sounded too close. The wind would carry death over the whole town.
Her eye caught the glint of moonlight off one of the gas masks lying on the floor. She sat up.
“Are you okay?” whispered Zoe, her grip tightening.
“We should put the masks on. It’s gonna blow through town.”
“Okay.” Zoe insisted on holding her hand as she crawled out of bed.
Abby picked up the mask Zoe had designated as hers. “I’m not gonna run.” She looked at the tangle of rubber bits and lenses, with a pair of disk-shaped vents on each cheek. “How does it work?”
“Here.” Zoe dropped hers at her feet and helped Abby get it over her head before adjusting the straps.
The mask pressed into her face too hard to be comfortable, but in some odd way, it reassured her. Zoe put hers on and marched over to her desk. She dragged the chair closer to the bed, left it, and headed to a wardrobe cabinet from which she lugged a rolled up sleeping bag almost twice her size. Abby tilted her head in confusion. Zoe unrolled it in the space between the bed and the chair before pulling the blanket half off the bed, using the chair to drape it into a tent.
Abby started to protest when Zoe grabbed her rifle from the closet, but didn’t want to make so much noise Bill or Pete woke up. Zoe crawled into their blanket fort and lay the rifle flat beside the bed. Abby scooted in next to her and pulled the ‘tent flap’ closed.
They could’ve been playing army… except for the real firearm.
She felt a little ridiculous in a knee-length purple sweatshirt and a gas mask, but maybe if the Virus got into the house, she’d be able to get away. The mask didn’t fit Zoe well, since it had been made for an adult. The occasional brush of coolness below Abby’s ears worried her that she had a similar issue. She put a hand on the mask to hold it tight to her skin, and shifted from sitting cross-legged to lying on her side.
“Cnh mm slee im eees?” asked Abby.
Zoe looked at her. “What?”
Abby took a couple quick breaths trying to calm down, but the difficulty of breathing in the mask frightened her to where it had the opposite effect. “Can. We. Sleep. In. These?”
Zoe shrugged.
Fogging lenses needled at claustrophobia. It made no sense at all, but the blanket wall did make her feel safer. If Amarillo repeated here, at least they had a high place. Nothing could get up to them. Zoe’s closet held enough bullets to kill everyone in Nederland twice…
Abby grabbed her chest and panted.
Zoe hovered over her, rising up on her knees. “Ymm kay?”
“Scared.” Abby closed her eyes.
The more she tried to breathe, the harder it got, and the more frightened she became. In minutes, the overwhelming urge to rip the mask off crashed head first into the terrifying idea that one tiny sip of air without it would kill her. Her gut churned.
No! Don’t throw up! She cringed. The mere thought of vomiting while wearing a gas mask made her even sicker. Bunnies! Flowers! Bunnies! Flowers!
Zoe peeked out the flap. “Nothing’s coming. We’re clear.”
Abby coughed, wheezing. How do soldiers wear these things? I can’t breathe! She grabbed the mask in both hands, pressing it down but wanting to pull it away.
“We’re safe. Stay quiet.” Zoe, apparently taking a cue from Bill, shuffled over and stroked her hair as though she were a giant housecat. “Don’t be scared. Dad and Gran’pa will protect us.”
Abby tried to think of fuzzy white dust hoppers frolicking in a flower-laden meadow, but still couldn’t calm down. She clutched her throat, wheezing, fighting for air.
Zoe grasped her mask. “You’re having ’nother ’tack. Should take this off so you can breathe.”
“No! I don’t wanna die,” yelled Abby.
She jumped at the clonk of the front door closing. They’re coming! Her eyes sent a warning to Zoe.
“Shh,” whispered Zoe. “You’re breathing too fast.”
The loft floor thumped with the weight of someone coming up the ladder.
Abby sat upright, grabbed Zoe, and whispered, “They’re here.”
“’Fected can’t do ladders.”
“Girls?” asked Bill. “What in the name of…”
“See?” Zoe held her hands up in an exaggerated shrug. “It’s just Gran’pa.”
Bill pulled the ‘tent’ open and blinked at them. At the sight of Abby’s fish-out-of-water act, he swooped down and pulled the mask away from her face. Air across her cheeks felt as though she’d walked from a sauna into a nice autumn day.
“No!” Abby reached for the mask. “The Virus!”
“No virus.” Bill wiped sweat from her forehead. “Another camera unit.”
Abby clutched her fists against her chest, right below her chin.
“Really.” He shook his head at the ‘fort.’ “Zara went out to check the drone. It came down about a hundred yards southeast of the artificial lake. There’s no need to suffocate yourself with a seventy-year-old mask.”
No Virus. She blinked a few times and held that thought until her breathing slowed to normal. “The air is safe?”
Zoe pushed her mask up so it sat on top of her head. A second later, super-serious face broke with a giant grin.
“Yes, Abby.” He held her hand. “That drone didn’t have anything on it other than electronics. You can relax.”
“But…” She gazed down. “It got close enough to see us, didn’t it?”
Bill eyed the rifle and gave Zoe a warning look. “You’re getting a little too casual with that weapon, sweetie. You need to respect it like the tool it is. It’s not a toy.”
Abby brushed her fingertips over the goosebumps on her calf.
“Sorry
. We thought the ’Fected were coming.” Zoe pulled the mask off her head, picked up her rifle, and carried both back to the closet.
“It saw us, didn’t it?” whispered Abby.
Bill’s lips curled inward. He heaved a sigh and nodded. “Yeah. Probably.”
“Can you take us away from Ned?” She put a hand on his arm.
Zoe scurried back to the tent and crawled in on her stomach.
“There’s no need to get that extreme yet.” Bill patted her hand.
“But… they’re gonna attack us. They’re gonna send it here where everyone is. We gotta go camp out in the woods so they can’t find us. Please, Mr. Vasquez… please take us somewhere safe.” Abby stared at him, whispering, “Please.”
Zoe yawned. She pushed at the sleeping bag and squirmed, frowning before glancing up at the bed then over at Abby. “We can sleep inna fort if you want. Or bed if you think the floor’s too hard.”
“Please,” whispered Abby. She eyed the pink fabric. “Blanket isn’t gonna stop anything… bed’s fine.”
Zoe smiled. “Okay. If you’re sure.”
“I’m not five years old… I don’t…”
“Here.” Zoe handed her Fuzz.
Abby looked down, but took it.
Bill backed up as the girls moved the blanket back to the bed and climbed under the covers. After putting the sleeping bag back in the closet, he tucked them in and sat on the chair, already nearby. “We’ve worked out an evacuation plan to temporarily relocate everyone to Boulder in the event a weaponized drone shows up.”
“I’m scared,” whispered Abby.
Zoe rolled toward her and put an arm over her chest. Bill’s eyes reddened and he wiped a tear before patting her on the back.
“The next one won’t be a camera.” Abby stared at Bill. “The next one will kill us.”
The Roadhouse Chronicles Box Set [Books 1-3] Page 116