by J. Thorn
The girl held out her hand, and he took it, encapsulating it entirely. She was small, petite, but she had strength to her. He did know her. Flashes of her face came to him in blinking fragments, but it was all too indistinct.
“Come on, we’ve got to get you back to City Earth. Old Grey couldn’t hold it, and Jasper’s still roaming free. I managed to get the Jaguar back from Len. I don’t know what you did back there, but the whole city went down. You must have taken out the entire power grid. Len thought it was his payload and came into the city… I managed to get out, but I couldn’t find you. Gez, say something. Speak to me.”
“P… P… Petal?”
“Yeah, Gez. Petal, remember? We came here to stop Seca… stop the AI… what did you do?”
He looked at her blankly. The name Seca didn’t mean anything to him, and what AI? All he remembered was the pain in his head, and the body. The body he butchered. He closed his eyes, trying to erase that particular, gory image. Of all the things he could have remembered, why did it have to be that?
The girl sighed and pulled him to the rope. She looped it twice around his waist and made him grip it as best he could. She flashed the torch up through the hole. The rumbling increased, pulling him up and out of his underground prison. He dropped his head back as he breached the surface. The cool air stung his wounds, but he breathed it deeply, taking the rich oxygen into his lungs.
The winch whirred as it lifted him up through a gap beneath the aircraft. A chrome-masked man reached out a hand and pulled him into a seated area.
“You did great. Whatever it is was. You knocked out Seca’s operation completely. My payload didn’t do anything that I expected. His security was too hot, but you, however, you managed it! The man hugged Gerry before sitting back on the bench seat.
“Who are you?” Gerry asked.
“Your ticket home, friend.”
They dropped the winch and brought Petal up. She sat next to the grinning man and stared at Gerry with the same look of awe. He couldn’t understand their reactions. Had no idea what they were talking about or what he had supposedly done. But instinctively he knew it was important, and there was something else he needed to do. He just hoped by the time he got where he was going that he could remember what it was.
As they gained altitude and picked up speed, Gerry watched the sun dip below the horizon. Thick, bulbous clouds carrying the promise of water covered the moon. He wished for rain. Wished for everything to be washed away and started anew.
Petal took a medical pack from the bulkhead behind her seat. She kneeled beside Gerry and, taking a cleansing wipe, began to clean his cuts. Looking at her wound—a fierce gash below her eye—he knew within himself that he’d let her down, failed to protect her. Someone had tasked him with her care, and now she was the one caring for him.
A roiling anger crawled around his guts like a snake awakening from a deep sleep. Angry because he’d failed her, but also for those who’d hurt her. Flashes of faces came to him, and each time he tried to focus, they blinked away, hiding on the edge of consciousness. But a name came to him: Jasper.
“Who’s Jasper?” he asked.
“The guy we’re gonna kill,” Petal replied, fixing a series of plasters to his wounds. “He is the one who has the demon AI you tried to stop. Or at least will have it soon.”
‘Tried.’ The word was like a knife slicing into his heart. She didn’t say it with any malice, but it was yet another reminder that whatever had gone down, he had failed her. Failed to stop this AI.
“I won’t fail again,” Gerry whispered. He pictured an image of Jasper. He was standing intimately with a woman, someone who used to be close to Gerry. My wife! And then he relived the moment again. The video played over in his mind of his wife betraying him.
The snake slithered further throughout his body, and he focused on what he was going to do. He pictured the bloody scene back in that metal room. The room of the body and the blood, and he pictured Jasper’s face on that mutilated lump of meat. All Gerry wanted then was vengeance.
Chapter 19
Petal filled Gerry in on what had happened. Their missions, Gabe’s betrayal, and what Jasper was planning to do. His memory didn’t feel like his own anymore. His AIA wasn’t responding—presumably killed by the EMP attack. Still, he felt ready to do what was necessary. He had children, and fragments of their lives and their time together lurked in the shadows of his mind, growing ever stronger, so that he now felt the loss of separation almost as strongly as his desire for revenge.
Channelling that loss fuelled his motivation. His focus. He’d lost so much lately, and he would rather die trying to restore order and save his city, as false and unreal as it was, than stand back and watch a million innocent people suffer at the hands of a fundamentalist and an AI programmed for evil.
That the Family were equally evil in their actions wasn’t the point anymore. He couldn’t undo the massive loss of life during the Cataclysm, and he couldn’t undo what the Family had done to the people living inside the Dome. But he could at least try and give them time. Time to live their lives as they’d always done: with ignorance and security. They were nothing more than lab rats for the amusement of a group of megalomaniac and wannabe gods, but they were still his people, and he was determined to give them as much chance of a secure life as possible.
Jasper and the AI had to be stopped.
A mask-wearing pilot spoke over their comm system. “Approaching the Dome. Security’s out in force. Eight squadrons of assault drones coming our way.”
“Hold on, Gez. This could get bumpy.” Petal pulled the safety straps on his flight jacket tight, pulling him securely into his seat. Gerry reached out and did the same, ensuring Petal was as secure as he was.
“Isn’t this a suicide mission? Shouldn’t we have called ahead? Explained to the Family what’s happening?” Gerry said. Outside the window, he saw a group of drones shaped like birds dart in formation to flank their craft.
“We tried that. Jasper’s got the place on lockdown. No traffic to and from the Family’s space station. It’ll take hours for them to get reinforcements to the ground, and we don’t have the luxury. But don’t worry. I managed to get a message to the prez. Let’s just hope he believed me.”
The side of her mouth kinked up, creating a sly, knowing grin.
It quickly changed as their craft jolted violently.
“Ion blasts! We can’t take many of these. I thought you uploaded the new codes?” Len said, staring at Petal.
Another explosion and they began to spin. Gerry’s guts twisted, and he gripped the handholds above his head. The smell of superheated ions brought back a memory of him being chased down by a drone… of being stuck, covered in steaming hot mud after narrowly avoiding an explosion
“Try the codes again,” Len shouted.
Petal was already one step ahead, frantically entering data on her HackSlate. “It’s no good. Jasper’s blocked my access to the drones. He must have got to Kuznetski. I don’t have time to hack my way in…”
Gerry reached across and took the HackSlate from her. The streams of code on the display resonated with him. He’d seen instructions like this before. It was written in Helix++, and he knew the AI, with its loops-within-loops of ever-changing programs. His hands began to move of their own accord. Everything but the code faded to black, and he felt himself disconnect from reality. All that existed was his mind and the code.
First he took control of the Jaguar and programmed an evasion route, sending their craft higher and higher. The drones followed, keeping up with their speed. The Dome shrunk beneath them as they climbed further.
In the real world, someone gripped his arm, shouted something, but he paid no attention. He was one with the code now, and he manipulated a set of commands to send the craft back down towards the Dome in a wide arcin
g corkscrew pattern.
As they passed the drones, they fired, but their speed was too great, and they missed. The G-force pushed Gerry back into his seat, and he could feel the reverberations of explosions behind him as the drones either crashed into each other or were caught in the crossfire.
The Dome was no more than half a kilometre away. He could hear panic in the voices as they screamed at him, but he ignored their protests and sent the craft into a straight dive.
Gerry accessed the weapons subroutine and fired their two on-board missiles after deactivating their payloads. He didn’t want the explosion, just the penetration. They launched towards their target, and Gerry tracked their trajectory so that they flanked the craft ten metres either side of its hull. They pierced through the Plexiglas outer shell of the Dome, and the Jaguar followed, easily breaking through the weakened material.
The drones, however, didn’t have the manoeuvrability and stuck in their spiral descent, crashed against the exterior, smashing to pieces.
Gerry brought the craft into a slow dip before levelling out. He flew it across the fields of GreenWay Park and through a series of downtown districts. Accessing the city’s metro maps, he followed the magno-tracks towards the main Council district where President Kuznetski had his office. They’d arrive in less than a minute, which gave him time to search the network and assess the damage.
Petal was right. Jasper had blocked traffic from coming in or leaving the Dome. It was like the demon AI had entangled the entire place in thick impenetrable tentacles. He saw no way through. The sheer depth and complexity of the viral barrier attacked anything that got near it. He backed off and ran a series of identity searches. One of the benefits of the city and everyone’s inbuilt AIAs was that anyone could be found and traced.
First he checked his kids: both were alive and at their last address. He presumed they were safe—for now at least. He left a trace program running on them to alert him of their movements. Next he searched for his wife. Predictably, she wasn’t on the network, and neither was Jasper. Obviously he was cloaking them both within the confines of the AI.
Last, he checked the president and found him. Only his warning beacon was sending out alert messages. Code 1: the highest possible emergency. But it was no use; they just bounced back off the AI. At least he had a lock on his position.
Gerry set the coordinates and pulled himself out of the code. It took him a few seconds to readjust. Petal and Len both stared at him, their faces glossy with panic sweat.
“You crazy, man!” Petal said with a grin so wide Gerry could see all her teeth, before leaning forward and kissing him on the cheek.
Len just shook his head. “I don’t know how you do what you do.”
Gerry looked at him, thought for a while, and said with a serious tone, “Neither do I.”
They entered the presidential building. Len’s holograms led the procession, their laser barrier giving them easy access. The security team didn’t know what to make of them. They’d obviously not seen anything like it. And the fact that Gerry, the most wanted man in City Earth, was alive and in their midst shocked them into silence.
The route was quick and easy. The government nerve centre hadn’t really needed much better security. This was the Dome, after all—where people do as they’re told and aren’t given any reason to complain or protest.
Gerry approached the chamber doors to Kuznetski’s personal room. He didn’t stop to knock. Just kicked open the doors and approached the great, polished oak desk that the president was sitting over, head in his hands. His bald head shined with sweat under the lights. Patches of grey and brown on his sides were turning greyer than Gerry had remembered when he last saw him giving a public address a couple of weeks ago.
“They’ve gone,” Kuznetski said, looking up at Gerry. Heavy bags hung beneath his brown eyes, and the wrinkles around his eyes and mouth had deepened to rough crags.
“Who’s gone?” Gerry asked.
“Those who are taking the City from me.”
“We’ve come to help.”
“Who are you people?” He sat back from his desk then, taking in the scene in detail for the first time.
The elder man looked closely at Gerry for a few long seconds. A shine of recognition lit up his dark brown eyes. “How did you… you should be…”
“Dead. I know. Look, we haven’t got time for this. Just tell me what happened.”
Miralam Kuznetski slumped in his chair and rubbed his forehead. Gerry could almost hear the cogitations going through his brain. He looked up at Gerry then, regarded him and his entourage closely, and then leant forward on the desk.
“Okay. They came, took the security codes and left. I couldn’t stop them. It happened too quickly. My security… we’re not set up… how was I—”
“You couldn’t have done anything. Don’t blame yourself. Just tell me what you know about them and where they’re heading. We’ll take over from here.”
He hesitated, scanning Gerry and his allies. Gerry knew they must have looked like a ragtag outfit. Gerry stepped forward, leaned over the desk and stared Kuznetski in the eyes.
“Listen,” Gerry said, keeping his voice calm, friendly. “I need you to trust us. I could spend some time showing you evidence of what’s going on, giving you the rundown of everything that I, and my allies here, have gone through in order to get here, but frankly I’m tired, stressed, and we’re running out of time. I need you to tell me where they went, and right now. Okay?”
It was clear to Gerry the man was out of his depth. Sweat dripped from his forehead, and his jaw hung open. A vein pulsed in his temple.
“Come on, man,” Petal said. “We’re trying to help you here. Just tell us.”
Miralam wiped the sweat from his face, sat back and took in a deep breath. “Okay,” he said. “They went to Cemprom.”
Gerry thought back through his murky memories to his time there. So many faces flew through his thoughts, and one stuck out. His boss. Mike Welling. His brain filled in the rest, rebuilding old connections, bridging memories and building a mosaic of dread. His right hand twitched as he remembered firing the gun that put Mike out of his misery.
“The AIAs! Have they got into them yet?” Gerry asked.
Kuznetski squinted at Gerry. “What do you mean?”
“Jasper, the guy who is leading all this, wants to access the main city network to get to everyone’s AIA. Once he’s inside, he could wipe out every single person in this city…”
Kuznetski didn’t say anything. Just sat back in his chair and ran a shaking hand across his bald head. “They’ve abandoned me here, haven’t they?”
“They? Who are you talking about?” Gerry asked. “Wait, you’re one of the Family too?”
He nodded. “I’d hoped they would have received my alert signal. They should have come by now. But I’m stuck here.”
Petal stepped up beside Gerry. “Wait a god-damned minute,” she said, pointing her finger at Kuznetski. “If you’re one of the Family, then you must know Jasper.”
“No, no, I don’t. I’ve never been up to the station. He only came down a few months ago. I didn’t even know about it until recently. I don’t know him.”
Gerry held up his hand. It was clear he was telling the truth. The guy was panicked almost out of his skin. His hands shook like he had frostbite, and he physically pushed himself back away from Petal as she leaned towards him.
“I don’t care about you right now.” Gerry couldn’t hide his disdain for him and the Family. He fought to control the rising fury within himself. It seemed that Kuznetski’s connection to the Family wasn’t just through his father’s relationship with them during the war. It was clear that Kuznetski Senior was closer to the Family than most had known. “I need to know why Jasper’s gone to Cemprom. Is that where the main node
is?”
“Yes, the central uplink. It’s in the underground secure room. No one but the Family and I knew about it. Not even you guys who worked on the algorithms and the security systems. It was supposed to be a completely ring-fenced safety measure. In case it got hacked, it was supposed to keep—”
“The Family safe? Yeah, that much is evident. Give me the codes. Now.”
Kuznetski took a DigiCard from his jacket pocket and handed it over to Gerry, who passed it on to Petal.
“Can you check that, Petal?” Gerry said.
She took the card, nodded, and inserted it into her HackSlate. While she was doing that, Gerry turned back to Kuznetski.
“How long ago did they leave?”
“About ten minutes. I can get you there quicker, though. We have a direct access tunnel here under the building. Not on any schematics so they didn’t know about it, didn’t even ask. Jasper seemed frantic, unfocused.”
“Yeah, coz Gez here screwed his boss right up, and he’s running scared, that’s why,” Petal said.
Gerry couldn’t help but crack the barest of smiles at her petulance and utter disregard for authority. He was reminded all over again why he liked her so much.
“The codes are good, Gez,” Petal said.
“Good. Len, can you leave some of your guys here to make sure Mr President doesn’t do anything stupid?”
“Hey, I’m on your—”
“You’re most definitely not on my side,” Gerry said as he leaned across the desk, violating his personal space. “You could have killed my kids today with your pathetic actions. Make no mistake. Whatever happens, I will be back to deal with you personally.”