“Gez, over here.” Petal reached back, grabbed his hand, and pulled him through a thin slice between buildings. Daubed on one side was a set of numbers in barely visible paint. Gabe took a torch from his jacket and shined it on the markings. The numbers seemed to label the wall, as if it were a grid reference. Gerry ran his hand over the stone of the building. It was warm to the touch, despite being completely in shadow. A faint rumble travelled through his fingers.
“Seca’s place must be close by. There’s definitely a power source or something under here.”
Petal took out her HackSlate and pulled up some notes. “Len said there were a number of entrances across the city. It’s got to be around here somewhere.” Using a partial map, she tapped and swiped her fingers across the 3D image of the buildings. “I’m getting Meshwork traffic signatures from further down here. I’ll patch you in.”
A flood of information flowed across his VPN, connecting him to something larger: the actual Meshwork. It wasn’t via his dermal implant either. It was as if he was integrated directly.
In his mind he pictured the torrent of bits crash around him like a white-water river, and then he saw patterns. He did his trick of sorting data and soon built up a picture of the city and the flow of computer traffic. Like a bloodhound, he pushed his way in front of Petal and Gabe and began to lead them through alleyways and across abandoned parks, always moving towards the nexus of data. His heart pounded, and his lungs burned as he realised he was sprinting.
“Hold up, man!” Gabe shouted. Gerry shook his head, cleared his mind, and looked behind him. Gabe was helping Petal to catch up. She looked so frail now. Had he not noticed her deterioration over the last few days? Had she just grown weaker in these last few minutes?
He admonished himself for being so neglectful. Enna had wanted him to look out for her, and here he was, getting carried away, thinking only of himself—and his kids. He took a breath and waited for Gabe and Petal. Behind them, he spotted something black and sleek take off from the top of a tower and fly down towards them.
“Drone!” Gerry pointed behind them. “Hurry up.” He looked around him. He was now in the open, standing in the middle of a great field of dead, brown plants. Spotted about the place, huddles of people, presumably dead or at least dying, lay like great stones. No real cover anywhere. They had to get across the field to the next sector of the city, to the nexus of data.
“I thought the payload grounded the drones?” Petal asked as she sprinted towards Gerry.
“It did. For a while,” Gerry said. “Must have got them all back online.”
Petal twisted her head to see the drone and stumbled. Gabe managed to catch her and helped make up the ground. Gerry dashed towards them, and propping Petal up with Gabe, they shuffled their way across the field, all the while stealing glances behind them as the black shape closed the gap.
A crash erupted across the sky, and a great sod of dirt exploded just a few metres to the side of them.
“Run for it,” Petal screamed, pushing Gerry ahead of her as she and Gabe steered off in opposite directions.
The drone flew past them and over Gerry’s head before sweeping round to face him. It was like a black swan. Sleek, but deadly. A laser point shone from its nose. It danced on the ground ahead of him as he continued to sprint, dashing in sharp angles in order to avoid it, but the beam tracked his every move, and then it found him, crawling up his arm and shining in his eye. The drone hummed as it recharged its cannon.
A particle beam the width of an adult’s hand shone from a barrel beneath the drone’s matte-black fuselage. It aimed right for Gerry’s face. He twitched away at the last possible opportunity as the cannon fired a stream of charged ions into the ground beside him. The heat scorched the side of his face, making his skin fizzle and burn with spots of super-heated mud.
He lost his balance and tripped over a rock, crashing into the ground. Gabe and Petal shouted at him. Both voices came from different locations. His head spun and chest heaved as the drone approached and wound up its cannon once more.
Gerry rolled to his side, grabbed the gun from his waistband, and instinctively fired off two rounds. The first missed, but to his surprise, the second hit and knocked the drone off its current trajectory, sending it into a barrel roll. Taking advantage, he got to his feet and spotted both Gabe and Petal reaching the end of the field and entering the next district of closely built buildings.
Petal sent a message across their VPN. It just said: ‘RUN!’
So he ran.
Every few steps the dread grew. He wanted to look behind himself, but daren’t lose the time. The familiar whine of the drone’s engines grew louder. He knew it was right behind him. He could smell the gas from the particle cannon. Petal waved frantically, urging him to sprint, but his legs were growing heavy, and a painful stitch made every breath feel like a stab in the heart.
Sweat dripped down his face to mix with the still-hot mud splatters.
He wiped a hand across his cheek to clear it and gritted his teeth for the final stretch.
The laser guide danced to the left of his feet. He counted for two seconds, listening to the cannon power up, and then dove to the right as soon as he heard the explosion. The bolt missed him—just. He turned to see the drone hover no more than twenty metres above him. It dipped, shone the laser on his chest, and wound its cannon up to speed.
Pain shot up his leg as he fell into a pothole. He tried to pull it free, but the pain and awkward angle prevented him from moving.
“Run, Gez. Get the hell out of there,” Petal screamed. Her voice grew louder, and he knew she was running towards him.
“Stay back. Save yourself. Get to Seca’s place.”
Gerry aimed his gun and fired off two more shots. The third returned an empty click. Both shots clipped the side of the drone, but it soon corrected itself and floated down to just three metres above him. Gerry closed his eyes, convinced he was just seconds away from being blasted by an ion stream, when a voice spoke from a speaker within the craft.
“You’re quite disappointing in the flesh, Mr Cardle. My little lure, my Architeuthis, found something talented in you, but maybe you’re not as special as I first thought. I thought you’d do better than this. Maybe I overestimated your abilities after all. Well, I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth.”
“Seca? You bastard, you utter—” Gerry frothed at the mouth and couldn’t get his words out. The pain grew red hot in his leg as he pulled it free. Tears clouded his vision, and the whine of the cannon pressured his eardrums so that a low rumble encompassed his hearing.
Everything slowed down. His heart stopped racing, and his mind switched on. In front of him: the same flow of Meshwork computer traffic as before. The nexus lay just behind him beyond the fields, and there in the middle, flowing towards the drone, a thin stream of information. Packets of bits bouncing back and forth, carrying instructions and data.
The rumble increased in power, becoming a high whining noise. He knew it’d fire any second, but still he remained calm as he dove into the flow of information, probed at the packets of info, and traced their route back to the nexus. A node, no more than a small server amongst many, housed the AI that controlled the drone. Gerry ripped through its firewall with ease, crashed terabytes of junk information into every available port, and swamped the AI with as many processes as Gerry could handle. The flow of traffic to the drone decreased, then stopped as the AI ran out of resources to deal with Gerry’s assault.
The drone still fired.
Chapter 16
The ion blast crashed into the ground off in the distance. Hands gripped Gerry’s shoulders and heaved him out from his trapped position just as the drone crashed into the ground within a metre of his last position.
“Gez, you okay?” Petal stood over him, her goggles up and eyes full of concern. Her skin glowed with a sickly sweat. She was paler than ever and looked so frail. He looked around, convinced he imagined everything and had actu
ally been hit by the cannon. But there she stood, leaning over him, her warm hand on his cheek. Her voice softened as their eyes met.
“Speak to me, Gez. Are you hurt?”
“Apart from a near heart attack, I think I’ve broken my ankle.”
She brought her face close to his, but still their eyes locked onto each other. She wiped away the hot mud from his face. Her lips pouted with concern. They were so close to his face now…
“You’re burned, Gez. It’s okay. We can fix that.”
She reached into her jacket and pulled out a syringe of NanoStem. Before he could protest, she jabbed his ankle and plunged it into his bloodstream. It instantly cooled the sprain and tingled as if he had pins and needles. “Try to keep your weight off it. The ’Stems will fix that bone right up.”
She smiled at him then and turned her attentions to the drone. “How did it know we were here? I thought the payload was supposed to knock out his servers and stuff?”
Gerry didn’t know, but Gabe’s absence was telling. Ever since Enna had tasked Gerry with looking after Petal—though it seemed the other way around—he’d suspected there was something else going on with Gabe. Trust was now being called into question, which was never a good thing. It made decision-making almost impossible when a key member of that equation was unknown in his motivations.
“How did you do it?” Petal asked. “Did you hack it?”
“I’m not entirely sure. Panic set in, and the next minute I know I was in the network. I must have piggybacked the VPN and found myself in the Meshwork. Seca had an AI controlling the drone. What else has he got automated to such a level? The network is vast… I don’t know how we—”
“We’ll find a way, Gez. Come on. Gabe’s waiting. He’s found an access into the compound.”
“Are you okay? You’re not looking well. Do you have any more NanoStems for yourself?”
“Uh huh.” She smiled again, but Gerry knew she was lying.
“Petal, tell me straight. What’s happening to you? You used the last of the ’Stems on me, didn’t you?”
“Look, I’m fine. I can do this. Just get a move on, yeah? We’ve got a job to do.”
Just like that, the warmth had gone, the goggles came down, and Petal was back to her mysterious self. How could he look after her if he didn’t know what she needed? Enna should have given him more information. Hell, Petal should let him help her if Gabe wouldn’t.
“Is it an addiction? To the ’Stems?”
“I said leave it, Gez.”
“Or are you sick from containing the demons and AIs?”
Petal ignored him and walked off towards the edge of the field.
Resigning himself to not knowing, Gerry limped after her, his ankle numb to the pain as the NanoStems repaired the damage. Or killed the nerve endings. He wasn’t entirely sure how they worked. And didn’t care. He had a sniff of Seca and now wanted to finish him.
For good.
Using Petal’s HackSlate, Gabe traced a route through the city until he arrived at a manhole covered by rags and detritus. “Down here. Can ya feel it?”
Gerry placed a hand on the metal cover and, like the building before, it had a warm vibration to it, like servers, and rows and rows of computing power. Instinctively he felt the sheer amount of processing that must be going on in the Underside.
Gabe lifted the cover and waited for Petal and Gerry to go down before climbing down and replacing the cover. A sickly green light shone from far below them, lighting their way down the metal-runged ladder. They must have descended for over a hundred metres by the time the light fully lit the corridor. It reminded Gerry of the submarines in films he’d watched as a kid. He couldn’t remember much about them now, but the circular metal gangways felt familiar.
Myriad tubes of thick copper and fibre-optic cable ran down the sides of the tunnels. Like a raging river, information blasted through the network.
“We should turn off the VPN,” Gerry whispered to Petal. “And your HackSlate. We can’t afford to transmit anything down here. You too, Gabe.”
They both nodded at him, switched off their slates, and Petal turned off their VPN.
Gerry noticed the lack of connection as his dermal implant switched off. Even the subtle red LED, put there by Gabe to ‘assess his code’ what seemed like decades ago, but which really was just a few days, blinked out. And yet, weirdly, he still felt connected to… something.
Was it the Meshwork? Or Seca’s own network? Or maybe it was just a vestige of being connected to Petal via their VPN for so long. Nothing more than a phantom feeling amplified by the stress of the situation and the ’Stems doing their thing on his ankle.
The three of them followed the tunnels, Gerry giving direction as he seemed to feel his way around, sensing his way towards the hub of the network. In truth, it was just the vibrations in the metal tunnel; he went where it felt the strongest. Neither Gabe nor Petal felt it strongly enough to guide them. Gerry thought it was a case of him being fairly new to life outside the safe confines of the Dome and thus more sensitive. Petal and Gabe had been living off the grid for years, surrounded by their own personal computer networks. They were used to the hum and buzz of electricity, cooling fans, and processors.
“I hear voices up ahead. Wait.” Gerry pulled up, turned, and whispered. He swore to himself as he realised he hadn’t reloaded his weapon. Petal silently extended her chrome spike from her inner arm and flattened her back against the tunnel as the echoing voices drew closer.
The green light from an exit just a few metres ahead wavered; then shadows appeared on the dull, metal floor. Gerry could hear the footsteps and the laughter real close.
Petal breathed into Gerry’s ear, “After three…”
She counted to two, slithered past Gerry, and drew back her spike ready to attack, when two men in stealthy, dark grey and black armour turned into their tunnel. Before Petal had time to attack, Gerry felt something cold against his throat.
“Just stay still, man. Don’t move…”
“Gabe! What the?”
Gabe pushed a sharp blade into Gerry’s throat, holding him against the wall.
“Nice work, old man,” one of the guards said as they crashed a stun-baton into Petal’s face, sending her instantly to the floor in a heap.
“What have you done? Why?” Gerry couldn’t understand. It was happening too fast.
Then it was his turn. The guard, wearing a sick smile, raised the baton and smashed Gerry across the temple, sending bolts of electricity through his brain, bringing the darkness in a rushing torrent.
Chapter 17
His body twitched beyond his control. Tiny currents activated his muscles in excruciating ways. The pain didn’t stop—just changed form like an energy source. It started with cramps in his legs and arms, and then shooting pains up his spine. Then it was his heart and lungs receiving stabbing sensations. It felt like someone was pushing burning needles into his organs.
Despite his eyes being open, he couldn’t make out anything through the blurry film of sweat and tears. Indistinct shapes hovered not far from his face, but all he could sense was pain.
He couldn’t shout out. A gag had been tied tightly around his head, cutting into the corners of his mouth. His body jolted again. This time he felt the ice-cold tip of a metal rod touch the burned flesh on his face.
Close to his ear, he heard a laugh.
The voice seemed familiar, and then it spoke to him.
“You think this is pain? You think you’re going to die eventually? You think this is torture? You’re wrong.”
It was the voice from the drone. It was—Seca.
The cold steel tip traced an arc across his cheek to his right eye. He held his breath until his lungs burned, but still the pain didn’t come. Forcing himself against restraints that held him to a metal board, he thrashed uselessly. He knew it. Seca knew it. But still Gerry fought. Would fight until he had nothing left. Until, that is, Seca sent a bolt of electricity down the
rod and into his eye, frying it instantly within its socket. His brain reeled back into his skull, horrified at the attack on one of its senses. He wished for unconsciousness, but something kept him awake and fully aware of what was happening.
Something switched on inside his mind. That insistent tingling he felt before increased and grew to a deafening buzz before completely shutting off, leaving a void in his consciousness.
Then a familiar voice inside his head spoke.
- No new messages. Your newsreader app was cancelled three days ago. The City Earth Police Enforcement officially wants you. I’m regulating the work of the NanoStems. You have a lot of internal injuries, Gerry. The optical nerve to your right eye is beyond repair. I’m adjusting focusing and depth perception to monocular vision.
At first, Gerry thought it was a dream. A drug-induced flight of fancy his subconscious decided to take him on in order to deal with the pain and the trauma. But no, he was awake, breathing through the gaps in the gag and his left eye blinking spasmodically to clear the salty film. That voice, inside his head, was well known to him. Magdalene—his AIA. But how?
Tentatively he reached out with his mind and sent her a number of basic instructions. She responded.
- Your blood-sugar level is low, Gerry. You should find something to increase it. It will help the healing, Mags said.
- Mags, how can you be working? I uninstalled you, Gerry replied.
- You can’t uninstall me. I AM you. You somehow temporarily disabled me, but I found a way through.
- How? You are me? What do you mean? You’re my AIA… installed as a kid like all the—
- No. We’re different, Gerry. I was never installed. We were born as one. Made as one. While you ring-fenced me, I had time to look through our root files. The Family created us.
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