The machine reached the core of her mind. Ice-cold tendrils spread outward and left frozen, blackened tracks as they passed.
Leah’s mind began to die.
37
With one last effort, Leah drew in her will and fired it through the tendrils and toward the machine’s intelligence. She imagined her thoughts as fire, streaking along the threads. Immediately, the machine pulled back. She drove her fingers back into the wolf’s brain. The sting of electricity came again. This time, she welcomed it.
Her energy began to wane, but she could feel herself being pulled toward the intelligence. The hair on her arms rose up. Her fingertips touched the brain’s nexus. As they did, Leah’s will hit the core of the machine’s intelligence. Light flared in front of her. A high-pitched whistling pierced her skull.
The light vanished as suddenly as it had arrived, and Leah found herself looking up at the wolf and down at herself, both at the same time. The double image swam. Her vision shifted, focusing first on her pale, terrified face then moving on to the mass of metal and wire that was what remained of the wolf’s head. Vertigo set her reeling. She tried to close her eyes, but they wouldn’t respond.
The force of the machine’s will crashed into her mind. She let it wash over her, breaking apart like waves upon the rocks. The whistling increased in intensity and began to shift and change. It went from a solid, skull-splitting whine to a static hiss to a multitoned warbling that set her teeth on edge.
Pressure increased inside Leah’s skull. She could feel it behind her eyes. Her mouth was gummy, as though someone had filled it with thick, sticky glue. The machine’s thoughts blended with hers. Billions of pieces of unconnected data rushed into her mind. She felt her grip on the world around her slip as the onslaught battered her senses.
Leah pushed back again—a sudden blast of thought directed at the center of the wolf’s brain. The double vision solidified into a single view of her face from the wolf’s perspective. Leah became aware of the creature’s body. Energy seethed within its muscles, waiting for her to unleash it.
The sound in her head resolved into something recognizable—data. Leah could make out fragments, then whole blocks of information. It was code—the instructions that formed the creature’s AI, and she understood it, could control it.
Hesitantly, Leah fired a command toward her/its legs. A paw twitched and lifted slightly. The machine renewed its efforts to eject her, but Leah had tethered her thoughts to the wolf’s systems. It was a rudimentary intelligence, designed to protect and kill, nothing more. Her confidence grew, and so did her grip on the wolf’s mind. The machine’s efforts buffeted her, but she let them roll past.
She fired off another command. This time, her/its paw stepped off Leah’s chest. She felt cool metal against the pads on her/its feet. Another command, and the wolf stepped off Leah completely. One more, and she/it turned to face Westler.
The captain was glaring at the wolf. Whether it was her own skills of observation or the wolf’s heightened senses, Leah wasn’t sure, but she could sense Westler’s fear. It radiated off her as an almost physical thing.
The wolf was moving the moment the command formed in Leah’s mind. It prowled toward Westler. She could feel the power in its muscles. Data flashed across her mind. Westler’s weight and height, two dozen predictions of possible responses she might make. Green lines plotted the path of possible escape routes.
But Westler didn’t run. She stood motionless as the wolf advanced toward her. Her lips were drawn tight. She seemed paler than before and a decade older.
Leah turned her attention to the probes in the wolf’s skull. She searched for the connections that would allow her to control them. One of the probes darted forward. Another swept from side to side like a cobra. She found the path that led to them, thick red lines of data running through the wolf’s intelligence. Her thoughts latched on to the lines, and the probes stopped moving randomly.
At Leah’s command, the wolf charged at Westler.
38
Westler raised her arms, but the movement wasn’t intended to fend off the wolf. She swept them in a broad, circular motion. A thousand silver fragments appeared in the air and flew toward the wolf.
Pain rained down on Leah as the shards peppered the wolf’s body. She could feel them as they tore through its fur and embedded themselves in its body. As the wolf moved, the fragments shifted and twisted. Each movement sent slivers of pain radiating through its body. Leah felt her grip on the wolf’s mind falter. She drove her thoughts deeper.
One of the silver objects caught the wolf’s shoulder. Its forepaws slipped, and it began to go down.
No!
Leah forced the wolf to right itself. Westler fired off another cloud of fragments. This time, Leah was ready for it. She pulled the wolf left. Pain erupted in its right flank as some of the shards found their target. Most missed.
Westler turned and ran toward a large steel door lit by a red emergency light. Leah was sure it hadn’t been there a moment before. She considered leaving the wolf and trying to use Westler’s exit herself, but her body was too far away. She had no idea how long it would take to regain control of it. Westler would be gone before Leah could stop her. She cycled through the needle-nose probes until she found what she was looking for.
The wolf was almost on top of Westler. Leah pictured the probe striking at her. There was a moment’s delay, long enough for Leah to think maybe she’d lost control. Then the probe darted forward. Its needle sank into the fleshy calf of Westler’s right leg. Leah felt the clear fluid in the needle flowing deep into the muscle. Westler let out a cry of pain and fell forward. The door broke apart and crumbled into hundreds of silver cubes that cascaded to the floor.
Westler rolled to fend off the oncoming wolf. There was no fear in her eyes, just rage. She raised her hands as if to launch another attack, but her movements were imprecise. Her left leg kicked out once then fell still.
Leah slowed the wolf’s advance. Its claws tapped out a steady beat on the floor as it walked toward Westler. Her arms wavered and dipped toward the ground as though they’d suddenly turned to lead. Her head followed suit, and within seconds she was lying motionless on the floor.
Leah could see Westler’s chest rising and falling. Her eyes flicked left and right as though she was searching for a way out.
The wolf’s mass of probes and needles was still protruding from its face. Leah took inventory of them. Three needles and four probes that fed directly back into the machine. She looked down at the captain through the wolf’s eyes. Westler had stopped looking for a way out. Now she stared defiantly up at the wolf towering over her.
Leah pulled the needles back into the wolf’s skull. She didn’t need them. The tips of the probes opened up to reveal long spikes like silver nails. The finger-like probes clicked and clacked as they positioned themselves above Westler’s forehead.
Without a moment’s hesitation, Leah moved the spikes down. There was no blood. The spikes simply slipped into Westler’s skull, passing through her skin as though it weren’t there.
Westler didn’t react at first. Then her face twisted in agony. Her mouth widened in a soundless scream. Tears ran from the corners of her eyes. There was a burst of pressure in Leah’s mind, and Westler joined her inside the machine.
39
Westler stood in front of Leah. Her avatar had changed. She was wearing a white smock and loose-fitting white pants. Her feet were bare. The younger version of her face had gone, replaced by the real, grandmotherly one. Her head was tipped back slightly. Her eyes were open, but instead of being gray, they were pure white. Leah looked down at herself. She wore similar clothes to Westler, but hers were so black she could barely see the folds of the material.
Leah placed the tips of her fingers against the side of Westler’s forehead just as she had the wolf’s probes. There was a moment’s resistance, like pushing through a sheet of rubber, and then she was inside.
Westler’s mind o
pened up in front of her—a wide expanse of darkness speckled with tiny pinpricks of searingly bright light. Her memories became Leah’s. The force of hundreds of thousands of moments, over six decades of experiences, hit Leah. Her mind reeled.
They flooded her thoughts—the sweet smell of spices cooking in a tiny kitchen. The heat and sweat of sparring at a Transport Authority training center. The sun setting behind the massive towers of New York City. The pain of a broken wrist. Anger at watching a less deserving colleague win a promotion. Satisfaction as they failed.
The edges of Leah’s own memories blurred. She began to lose all sense of which past belonged to her and which belonged to Westler. Did Leah have a childhood friend called Nathan? Did she break her toe fighting, or was that Westler?
An image of a man flashed through her thoughts, catching her off guard. It took her a few seconds to realize who it was, and then she was chasing the memory through the chaos raging in her mind. Each time she thought she’d grasped it, the memory slipped and twisted away from her.
Another memory. The man was sitting at a table. Westler was looking down at him. Another Transport officer stood behind the man. The officer grabbed him around the neck and hauled him upright. Leah tried to react, to force Westler to stop him, but the scene played out just the way she’d seen it. The man, her father, was escorted out of the room. Westler followed him.
Leah stepped back, pulling away from the memory. It hung in front of her, an amorphous red cloud floating in the darkness. Silver threads led away from the cloud, connecting it to other memories. Leah traced her way along one of the threads. At the other end lay the memory of a girl crying in the corner of a cell. Leah retraced her steps and tried another. This one connected her to the memory of an argument with a superior officer. She retreated and tried again. And again. And again.
And then her father was there.
40
Hatred wound itself into Leah’s heart as she looked through Westler’s eyes at her father. He was in the black room, strapped to a chair identical to the one Leah herself had been interrogated in. His face was so heavily bruised she could barely see his eyes through the slits they’d become. A thin trickle of blood ran from the corner of his mouth. His clothes were torn and soaked in sweat and worse. Black scorch marks dotted his shirt across his chest.
Westler leaned forward.
“Andrew. This really is so unnecessary. All you have to do is tell me where you hid the storage module.”
Andrew sniffed then spat a gobbet of blood onto the floor.
Westler grimaced and let out a theatrical sigh. She straightened up and moved around behind Andrew. “What about your daughter—Leah, isn’t it?”
Andrew tensed. His hands clenched into fists.
She knew it was hopeless, but Leah tried to influence Westler. If she could just give her father a sign. She was okay. She would be okay.
Westler placed a hand on Andrew’s shoulder. “How long do you think she would last in my care?”
Andrew twisted out of her grip. “You leave her out of this. She doesn’t know anything.”
Westler let her hand hover above Andrew for a moment then pulled it away. “I have an operative following her. I expect her to be in our custody within the hour.”
“She doesn’t know—”
Westler unclipped a short metal bar from her belt and lunged at Leah’s father. Her movements were too quick for Leah to keep up with. It wasn’t until the object began to crackle and pop and her father screamed that Leah realized Westler was using a stun baton.
Her father’s spine cracked as he arched his back. His fingers clutched at the leather armrests. The smell of burning flesh drifted through the air.
Westler pulled the baton away, but as Andrew relaxed, she jabbed it into his chest again. He flung his head back, spittle spraying from his mouth. He let out an anguished scream through clenched teeth. Tears crept from the corners of his eyes.
Leah let out her own silent scream. The reality that this was a memory, and that she could do nothing to help her father threatened to tear her sanity to shreds.
Westler pulled the baton away then swung it into the side of Andrew’s head.
41
Pure, unadulterated rage poured through Leah. She let the memory slip away and returned to the depths of Westler’s mind. She grabbed at one of the silver threads holding the memories together and pulled. It tore free and broke apart into a dozen glittering pieces. She ripped at another thread. The memory it was attached to glowed bright, then the light flickered and died. A dark patch grew from the junction between the thread and the memory, spreading across the memory’s surface and turning it a vile gray-black.
Another thread drifted near Leah. She clutched it and pulled. The thread tore free of another of the memories and broke apart. More threads led to the same memory. She clawed at them, shattering them and unleashing the rot.
She raged through Westler’s memories, tearing the connections apart. Silver fragments floated around her like platinum confetti as, one by one, the memories withered and died. She began ripping away the memories themselves. The rot bloomed around her fingers as she thrust them into memory after memory. The black rot spread through the network of threads, rolling ahead of Leah like a wave until she could see nothing but Westler’s dead and rotting past.
There was nothing left for her to destroy, but her anger was still there, burning hot. She embraced it. Westler’s presence faded.
Leah released her grip on Westler’s mind.
She was standing in front of Westler again. Her fingers were still pressed against the woman’s forehead. Dark traces of veins grew out from her fingertips. They crisscrossed Westler’s face and continued down her body and up beneath her hairline. A fresh vein spread outward, black and evil like the rot that had destroyed the memories. Westler’s eyes had turned a dirty gray. Black threads of decay exploded from the corners. Her skin had taken on an ashen tone. Her cheeks had sunken in.
Leah removed her fingers.
She stared at Westler. Her anger had finally dissipated, and it had left behind a hollow feeling. Alice had warned her once that revenge wouldn’t make her feel any better about her father’s death. Maybe she’d been right.
Another cluster of rot broke out on Westler’s cheek. Her right eye twitched, but it was an involuntary movement, the last gasp of her dying nervous system.
Was she dead, though? Injuries sustained in the virtual world were carried through to the physical, but was whatever Leah had done enough to kill Westler?
The damage on Westler’s face grew thicker and darker. Her neck was a mass of blackened veins. Gray-edged fissures appeared in her flesh. Her mouth twitched, and Leah took a step back. She was suddenly repulsed by the decaying body in front of her. She looked down at her hands, convinced she’d see the same infection spreading through her own body. Her skin was pale but unmarked.
Westler’s mouth parted, and she moaned. Leah’s eyes widened, and she shook her head. Westler’s right eye rolled upward, revealing more of the black rot. Leah turned away from the thing that had been Westler. The white walls turned black, and Leah was back in the interrogation room.
42
The wolf had gone, but Leah could still feel the machine’s intelligence. It was as though it was part of her now. Fragments of knowledge kept leaking into Leah’s thoughts—technical specifications for Transport vehicles, shipping routes and timetables, serial numbers, weather reports.
Names appeared—Wilson Kip, Felicia Willows, Ashbury, Oakbridge, Daniel Jones, Niamh Connor. None of them meant anything to Leah until her own name flashed across her mind along with another word—Lancaster.
Leah pulled at the fragments. There were answers out there, she could feel them, but the more she tried to focus on the information, the harder it became. It felt like the ragged shreds of someone else’s memories were leaking into hers—Westler’s memories. The thought of the woman’s decaying body made her shudder. She abandoned the memori
es and focused instead on the world around her. Westler had been able to influence it and create whatever she needed. Leah could do the same.
She took a deep breath and tried to relax. The memories crowded in around her. She brought up a wall in her mind, blocking them out. They faded to nothing. Imagining the black room and the masses of data just beyond its bounds, Leah willed the virtual world to bend to her will.
The room changed.
Four rows of lights flicked to life above her, dousing the room in a phosphorescent glare and revealing a circular door set into the wall. A large spoked wheel sat in the middle of the door. Leah reached out and grasped it. When she flicked the wheel downward, it spun easily. The door swung open.
She walked through the door into the library in the dollhouse her father built her. Her bare feet sank into the soft red carpet. The smell of leather and paper hung in the air. The door clicked shut behind her, and when she looked, it was gone—replaced by a solid bank of book-laden shelves.
There was a huge wooden desk at the other end of the room. A lamp sat on it, illuminating the desktop. Leah ignored the books and walked to the desk, but the folder she’d expected to see there was missing. Confused, she ran her fingers across the leather-topped desk where the file should have been.
She felt a moment of dizziness, and her vision blurred. Taking a deep breath, she turned away from the desk and walked to the nearest bookshelf. Picturing her own name, she pulled one of the books off the shelf and opened it.
The first page contained her basic information—name, date of birth, parents. She ran her finger down the page until she found her birthplace.
LANCASTER
Leah didn’t know anything about Lancaster. She’d left there with her father when she was young, after her mother had died. It might be a tiny village or a sprawling city for all she knew. Her father had never talked about it, and she certainly didn’t remember living there.
The Girl in the Machine (Leah King Book 3) Page 15