talking computer virus.
This guy, however, didn’t seem to have a problem with it. Gareth nodded at a door up ahead. “In there.”
It looked exactly the same as the room where I’d spoken
with Gareth before; they’d taken me here by helicopter after
level four when I’d been blindfolded. However, I could be
wrong. There wasn’t much to mark it as a unique room. It
was all white, with two narrow tables in the middle pushed
together to make one table. Two chairs on either side. Both
white. The monotone gave the moment a strange, almost surreal feeling.
Rogan and I, wearing our borrowed clothes from the safe
house and the heavy black boots from Countdown, were pushed
into the chairs so that we faced each other.
The slash of Rogan’s scar was red against his pale face. Blood
trickled down the side of his neck from where that thug had
hit him with the gun. My heart wrenched at the sight. His hands were still locked behind him in metal cuffs just
like mine.
He didn’t say anything and neither did I. But we’d spent
enough time together that I could guess what he might be
thinking.
Don’t lose hope. We’re not dead yet.
I’d try my very best.
“Leave us,” Gareth said, glancing at the men who stood there brandishing weapons that seemed so black against their
white clothes. “And send him in when he’s ready.” Send him in. My gaze left Rogan to move to the door. Send
who in?
The White Coats left and then we waited. It felt like hours
but I’m sure it was only minutes until he walked in. My mouth
fell open.
Oliver.
Definitely not unconscious anymore, although he looked
slightly out of sorts. There was a red mark on his head from
where he’d knocked himself out against the edge of the table
in the gaming den.
He wore an Ellis Enterprises security clearance name tag
against his otherwise casual clothing—ripped jeans and his
chaos-logo T-shirt. He seemed no different than the Oliver
I’d known…other than the fact that he now stood beside the
man who wanted to kill us.
He looked at me, and his brow furrowed before he turned
his attention to his new boss.
“Oliver?” I managed. “What are you doing here?” Gareth’s lips curved. “Oliver works for me now, don’t you?” Oliver nodded. “Yes, sir.”
Gareth moved toward him and slapped him twice on the
back. “This boy’s a genius. I always have room for geniuses
on my staff. He was hired in an entry-level position a week
ago, but his association with you, Kira, made him suddenly
all the more interesting to me. I’ve decided that he will become my new personal assistant.”
I ran my tongue over my very dry lips and tried to find
enough moisture in my mouth to form words. Gareth’s personal assistant? Oliver? I’d felt the ridge in the back of his scalp where he’d been fitted with an implant, and known he’d taken a job here, but I hadn’t expected his connection to
Gareth to be this close.
The thought didn’t fill me with reassurance.
Anyone could be bought. Even someone you thought was
your friend.
Gareth’s smile held. “Along with evidence of accomplished
programming and hacking skills, Oliver is very driven to succeed here—as many who are plucked from the streets seem to
be. Before long I have no doubt he will rise high in my ranks.
I promised him the opportunity. Isn’t that right, Oliver?” Oliver nodded. “That’s right, sir. Thank you again.” Gareth’s gaze slithered over me with distaste. “I honestly
believed that you had gotten the better of me with your little
escape attempt.” His expression darkened. “You can imagine
how delighted I was when we were informed of your whereabouts.”
I fixed Oliver with an icy glare. He didn’t meet my eyes. A cool new job with a great paycheck—but he had to stand
by with a smile on his face and watch people die. Including
me.
I would never forgive him for this.
“You said that you wouldn’t hurt her.” Oliver spoke up after
a moment of silence. He seemed totally incapable of making
eye contact with me.
Gareth laughed. “Sentimental, aren’t you? Yes, I did promise that, and I always keep my promises.” He looked at me.
“Since Oliver has an implant, he’s been able to follow along
with your cycle of Countdown. I believed after the reward level
his desire to protect you would fade. No boy enjoys seeing the girl of his dreams in bed with someone else, but he still feels a
sentimental attachment to you for some reason. Fascinating.” I scowled at him.
“Now, on to other business.” Gareth clasped his hands behind his back and began to pace the room slowly, moving in
a slow circle around our table. My gaze f licked to Rogan for
a second, but his attention was now fixed on his father’s possessed body, as if stunned. I realized this was the first time
Rogan had seen him in two years. “Inspect him, if you would
be so kind, Oliver.”
Oliver moved toward Rogan, and I saw that he had a small
metal receiver in his hand that f lickered with green and yellow lights. He moved it over the back of Rogan’s head, and
he studied the light reading.
“What are you doing?” Rogan sent a dark look toward
the kid.
“My son.” Gareth leaned against Rogan’s half of the table,
his back toward me. “Please, relax. Oliver is simply checking
the validity of your implant.”
“Jonathan removed it before you had him killed,” Rogan
growled.
“No, no. Not that implant. The other one. The prototype.” Rogan went very still. “But it never worked.”
Gareth pushed away from the table and began to move
about the room again. “A lot has changed since you went to
St. Augustine’s, Rogan. Technology believed to be redundant
can be made active. Especially the prototypes. You have one.
I have one. Anything after that was simply mass-produced
imitations of the originals.”
“Which means what?”
Then Rogan’s face twisted in agony, and he yelled out. I struggled hard against my restraints. “What are you doing
to him?”
Rogan slowly relaxed, his chest heaving, and there was now
a gleam of sweat on his forehead.
Gareth ignored me and instead glanced at Oliver, who
squinted at the receiver. “Well?”
“It looks good,” Oliver said simply. “I’ve activated it for
you. Simple, really.”
Gareth cocked his head. “I’m so pleased that you think so.
Then all is well with the world. Do you want to know why
I care about your prototype implant, my son?”
“You’re not his father.” I bit off the words. “And you damn
well know it. I knew you were possessed, but Jonathan told
us the rest.”
Gareth glanced over his shoulder and narrowed his gaze
at me. “Are you trying to make me angry, little girl? I’m not
sure if you’re brave or stupid.”
“Bite me.”
He laughed. “You have been an amusement to me, Kira.
And the Subscribers enjoyed you, up until your disappointing finish
, that is. I wonder if you truly do have Psi abilities
like Jonathan believed. I watched your interaction with Kurtis on the roof in level five. He was convinced that you could
see his soul. Were you lying to him?”
I glared at him. “I saw who he really was. Just like I saw
it with you.”
He regarded me for a moment. “A true Psi. A new breed,
an evolution to something greater than what came before.” A
f licker of interest lit his eyes. “Just like me. I never believed it
could actually exist. Perhaps I was being too closed-minded.”
He approached me and gripped my throat tight enough to hurt. “Obviously, when you read me before, you sensed the human presence who once controlled this shell. I wonder what
else you think you may have seen.”
I struggled to breathe, but didn’t f linch away from his intense appraisal. “Maybe I saw your soul.”
He raised an eyebrow and then released me. I coughed, still
feeling the imprint of his fingers on my neck.
Oliver watched me from the far corner, his expression tense. Gareth turned his back on me and approached Rogan, who
was struggling against his bindings, his narrowed gaze f licking between me and his father.
Gareth crossed his arms against his black suit. “While I’m
not happy about your attempted escape, Rogan, I will say that
I am very pleased that you survived so far in the game. When
I first brought you in, I thought of it as a mild amusement.
A way to get rid of you once and for all. I’d heard that there
were further investigations afoot after a similar crime at another university took place last week. This time it was ten girls
who were murdered.” He tsked his tongue. “A shame. Truly.” I shuddered at the thought of more girls dying so horrifically. “You mean, Rogan would have been proven innocent?” Gareth twirled around to face me. “Yes, it was only a matter of time. And I couldn’t have that.”
“So, now you’re going to kill me right here?” Rogan said.
“I’m surprised that you have the balls to do it yourself. Wait
a minute. How many Subscriber brainwaves would a talking
binary code have to absorb to have balls anymore?” Gareth moved so quickly that all I saw was a blur. He
grabbed a handful of Rogan’s dark hair and pulled his head
back. The chair teetered on two legs.
“A talking binary code, as you so crudely put it, can do many extraordinary things. And the brainwaves help with many things. The more I absorb through the implants, the
more powerful I become. But it’s not good enough.” He slowly brought Rogan’s chair back to its normal position. He patted Rogan on the top of the head as one might
do to an obedient dog.
“Oliver,” he said. “Tell Rogan what I plan to do with his
reactivated implant.”
Oliver pointed at himself. “Me? You want me to explain?”
He looked around at the rest of us nervously, then pocketed
the receiver. “Okay…sure. Uh, Mr. Ellis has requested that
I—and the team, of course—upload an artificial intelligence
program into your implant. Not sure if it’ll work, but the
reading I just took makes things look pretty positive. So…uh.
I think that’s about it.”
Gareth grinned. “Thank you, Oliver.” He put his arm
around Rogan’s shoulders and crouched down to whisper,
still loud enough for me to hear, “So you see, Rogan, we will
be family again. That’s why Countdown is so important. My
testing of it is now over. It was a narrow viewer base, anyway. It’s time to take the Network and the implants to a much
wider audience.”
Rogan wrenched away from him. “Why would you do
this? You’re not my father anymore. Why would you even
want me to be a part of it?”
Gareth’s grin widened. “Perhaps family is the wrong terminology. When part of me is uploaded into you, we will feel
the same, we will think the same. We will be one entity in
two bodies. With my power multiplied thus, soon everything
from this city to the Colony will be ours—and much more
after that. The whole world will be ours. And why you, specifically? The implant, my dear son. You share the exact prototype implant that I have and that is what makes it all work
so beautifully. Without that implant you would be as useless
to me as lovely Kira is.”
Rogan’s eyes had gone very wide. “You’re insane.” “I’m no longer prone to mental ailments such as insanity.
Nor will you be once you are…improved.”
“Improved?” I managed, my stomach twisting and turning
with each word he spoke. “How can you see this as an improvement? You’re no better than that robot from level three.” That earned me a truly withering look. “Kira, let me try to
explain this clearly so you will understand once and for all. I
am the next evolution of the human species. That’s what the
Plague was. A cleansing. A way to improve the human species and get rid of the excess fat clogging the arteries of this
planet. One day very soon, all humankind will be fitted with
one of my implants. They will feed us and we shall become
the gods of a new race.”
“You’re right, I can’t see that. All I see is a computer virus
that’s a few pixels short of a full program.”
“Then that is your unfortunate oversight. The robot you
fought earlier was a meager experiment in artificial intelligence. My intelligence is no longer artificial. I have a soul…
you said so yourself.”
“I didn’t say that. I said maybe I saw your soul.” He took a menacing step toward me.
“Wait!” Rogan’s voice was hoarse. “Don’t hurt her. Just…
just spare her. I won’t fight you on this. You can do whatever
you want to me, but you have to let Kira go.”
My eyes widened, but I held my tongue. He wasn’t only doing this to be my knight in shining armor. I was the one
with the antivirus disc hidden in my bra.
Both of us might not survive this, he knew that. But if I
could—and if I could get to that room…
No way. I wanted both of us to survive. I wasn’t ready to
accept any less than that quite yet.
Gareth laughed. “That’s so terribly noble of you. The memories I can access of you do not lead me to believe that chivalry was ever one of your virtues. Has juvenile detention and
sober living turned you into a gentleman?”
Rogan glared at him. “It did change me. I was a thoughtless, selfish, drug-addicted asshole before.”
“A thoughtless, selfish, drug-addicted asshole who didn’t
know good entertainment like Countdown when he saw it.” Rogan’s expression darkened. “It’s still murder.” Gareth sighed. “The murder of a human, especially a criminal, is meaningless. In the world I envision, there are no criminals. There is no crime. It will be a perfect place to coexist
and to thrive. And by the time this body wears out, I will
have developed the proper technology to be able to upload
my very essence into a new one.”
“Immortality,” Rogan said, stunned. “That’s what this is
all about for you, isn’t it?”
“And be thankful I wish to share it with you. Perhaps
there is a small part of this body that still feels a familial bond
with you. Otherwise, I likely would have already killed you
for ruining my game. When the Subscribers are angry, they
turn to other programs—programs I have no direct access to
yet.” His eyes narrowed. “You have no idea how hungry I
am right now.”
I shuddered.
“Spare Kira,” Rogan said again. “And I will do whatever
you want.”
Gareth cast a dark look at me. “Was it your idea to shoot
the cameras?”
I glared at him defiantly. “It was a mutual decision.” “You ruined what would have been a very interesting finale.”
“What, our deaths on camera? You sure have a twisted sense
of what’s interesting.”
“I’m still not entirely convinced that you wouldn’t have
shot Rogan to reap your ultimate reward if there had been
no other option.”
If my mouth wasn’t so dry I would have spit at him. “I wouldn’t have killed him,” I said evenly. “I would rather
have died first.”
“I guess we’ll never know for sure.”
I heard a whirring sound, and a small hatch in the wall up
in the top right corner of the room opened up and a camera
slid out. It swiveled around so that it pointed toward the table. “What the hell is that?” Rogan growled.
“You ruined my game,” Gareth replied. “I can’t have fifteen
thousand angry Subscribers. Now I will make it up to them.” Oliver moved forward. “Wait. You said that you wouldn’t
hurt her!”
Gareth put a hand on his shoulder. “And I meant every
word.”
Oliver relaxed a little. He dared a glance in my direction.
“See, Kira? I’m not as bad as you’re probably thinking. I refused to help if he was going to hurt you. He promised.” I didn’t reply. I was afraid of what I might say to thank him
for his “help.”
“Come with me.” Gareth led Oliver toward the door. “I’m
sure the new ending I have planned for this cycle of Countdown will be well received.”
Oliver moved with him but was frowning. “I don’t understand. You promised…”
Gareth nodded. “I promise that her death will be completely painless.”
“What are you doing?” Rogan roared. “I said that I’d cooperate if you let her go!”
Gareth shot him a dark smirk. “You have no choice but to
cooperate. Now, I will leave you in private—other than the
cameras, of course—to say your goodbyes.”
The door shut behind them, leaving Rogan and me in the
white room all alone except for the company of the camera. Rogan’s gaze shot erratically around the room. He strained
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