This Mortal Coil

by Emily Suvada

  “What are you doing?” There’s an edge to Cole’s voice.

  “I’m running a scan. Chill out.” I stare at the screen. His security is racing now, but it doesn’t seem to be going after the Trojan. It’s scanning his memory, probably running a routine check after the password change.

  “A scan on what?”

  I swallow hard, bang out a frantic command, and spin the screen around to face Cole. “A scan for hidden files, like you asked for. It’s coming back now.”

  Cole’s eyes drop to the screen. It flashes as the scan returns, and half a dozen text documents appear in a list.

  One is titled To_Catarina. The sight sends a chill through me. I click on it, and the screen fills with text.

  Catarina,

  My darling girl, if you’re reading this, it means I am dead. I know you want to grieve, but there is something I need you to do. I have completed a Hydra vaccine that may be our last chance at survival. The code is strong, but it is not without weaknesses, and it is essential that as many people as possible receive it.

  Unfortunately, there are those at Cartaxus who plan to withhold the vaccine and deploy it only to those who will submit to their rules and ideology. This will not only result in the preventable deaths of millions of people, it may threaten the vaccine itself. You, my darling girl, must not allow this to happen.

  Cartaxus forced me to encrypt the vaccine so that they could control it, but I have done it in a way that you will be able to unlock. You must decrypt it as soon as possible. You’ll need to use the notes I left with you and run them through a clonebox. There is an abandoned laboratory in Canada with all the additional equipment you will need. You must travel there, and once you arrive and unlock the vaccine, you must release it freely to all survivors. It is of utmost importance that you remain hidden from Cartaxus—you must never let them take you, my darling girl. If they find you, they will take the vaccine back under their control. Lt. Franklin will protect you, but he is a weapon of considerable power, and you will need to find a way to work together to unlock the vaccine.

  All my love,

  Lachlan

  I step back, swaying, the words racing through my mind. “Did you see that?” I turn to Cole. His eyes are glazed over, his brow furrowed in concentration. “Cole? Are you reading this?”

  He shudders and blinks, coming out of a VR session.

  “Did you see it?” I ask, breathless. “I know what my father wants us to do.”

  His eyes narrow. He barely glances at the screen before ripping the wire from his panel with a sickening screech of metal.

  “Jesus,” I gasp, backing away. “What happened?”

  “What happened? My security scanner just sent me a report.”

  I close my eyes. The Trojan. His scanner must have found it, and now he looks like he wants to break me in half. My father said the two of us would have to work together, and I’ve just destroyed what little trust we’ve managed to build so far.

  I step back, raising my hands. “Cole, I’ll take it out. I’m sorry, I was just—”

  He cuts me off, slicing his hand through the air. “I don’t want to hear it, Catarina. Or maybe I should call you Bobcat.”

  The air stills. My Skies codename. “Wait, what are you talking about?”

  “My scanner checked your genkit, and it sent me a report. You’re the hacker, the one they’re always talking about.”

  Oh no. This isn’t about my stupid little Trojan. He knows I’m part of the Skies.

  This is far, far worse.

  “Cole, I can explain—”

  “You’re the one who dumped the virus that killed Lachlan. You’re the one who destroyed everything.”

  “What?” I step back, and my shoulder hits the wall. “No, that wasn’t me, and it wasn’t the Skies, I swear. How could you think I’d hurt my own father?”

  “Because you’re a terrorist.”

  “We’re not terrorists. We had nothing to do with the attack on the lab.” I take a stumbling step to the side, but he grabs my shoulder and shoves me back against the wall.

  “Listen!” I yell, shrinking away. “Just listen, okay? My father left a plan for us. You need to read his note.”

  “You hacked our base,” he growls, “and you killed your own father. I’m taking you back to Cartaxus, and I’ll let them decide how to deal with you.”

  “Wait,” I say, clawing at his arm. He pulls the pair of silver handcuffs from his pocket and flicks one open. He must have taken them when I wasn’t looking. “Just check your panel,” I say. “There’s a file—”

  “I don’t want to hear any more lies.” His hand shoots out in a blur, grabbing my wrist.

  I have only a heartbeat of time left before I’m trapped, before he locks those cuffs around my wrists and drags me back to a Cartaxus cell. I dumped the Trojan into his arm, and I don’t know if it installed, but this seems like as good a time as any to test it out.

  “Recumbentibus,” I whisper, praying the code works.

  The lights on Cole’s panel fade, and he drops to the floor.

  CHAPTER 10

  IT TAKES FIFTEEN MINUTES UNTIL Cole starts to stir, his skin pale and clammy. I’ve hauled him up so he’s sitting on the floor, his hands cuffed behind him to the lab counter’s frame. Once I’d made sure he wasn’t going to choke on his own tongue, I sat down with my genkit, plugged him in, and started reading through his panel.

  Cole has some seriously strange, seriously dangerous tech inside him.

  The protective protocol that kicks in and makes his eyes go black is single-handedly the most complicated code I’ve ever seen. On one level, it’s simple. His panel has been fed a photograph of me, probably from my father. It recognizes me by reading the signals from Cole’s retina and constantly scans me and my surroundings. Whenever I’m in danger of being injured or killed, the AI shows Cole the threats in red through his VR interface, then pumps him full of adrenaline. The end result is that he’s so terrified and disoriented that he wants to attack anything that might hurt me.

  But there’s a whole other level I don’t understand. Pages of code I can’t figure out, linking to other files that look like gibberish to me. It’s my father’s code, I can tell by the notation, but it’s not like anything else he’s ever written.

  It’s not like anything anyone has ever written.

  The thing is, gentech doesn’t change your DNA. It doesn’t splice—cutting genes out and replacing them with new ones—even though most people think that’s what it does. Before gentech was invented, people thought splicing was the only way to change DNA, but it was problematic. Your body remembers how it was made. Splicing rogue genes into your DNA can corrupt it, which can lead to a sudden, painful death.

  Instead, most gentech uses ribbons of protein that cover your DNA like clothing covers your body. Underneath, you’re still the same naked person you always were, but you can dress yourself up or down to make yourself look different. That’s why you need a panel—your DNA keeps trying to take off its clothes and go au naturel, and your panel keeps forcing it to dress up.

  But Cole’s underlying DNA, beneath the layers of gentech, looks altered, which should be impossible. It’s hard to tell if I’m reading the output from his panel correctly, and maybe I’m not, but something tells me that whatever gave Cole the scars across his chest left him with even bigger scars on his DNA.

  “What . . . ,” he murmurs, stirring. “Where am I?”

  I look up from the screen. “You’re in South Dakota, last time I checked.”

  He tries to lift his hands, but the handcuffs stop him. He jerks forward, making the whole counter shudder, but it doesn’t move. It’s steel frame, fire-resistant, bolted into the wall. He growls. “What the hell did you do to me?”

  “I knocked you out with a piece of code. I don’t think it’s good for your nervous system, so please don’t make me do it again.”

  “I knew I shouldn’t have let you touch my panel.” His eyes drop to t
he genkit, following the cable all the way to his forearm. He tenses. “What are you doing?”

  “Reading.”

  “Take it out.”

  “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “Just take the cable out.” His voice is strained, his forehead glistening.

  “Okay, okay.” I type a command. The cable slithers out of his arm and flips around on the floor, reeling itself into the back of the genkit.

  He closes his eyes. “Thank you.”

  I raise an eyebrow, staring at him. “I’m sorry I knocked you out, but you were about to handcuff me. I didn’t have a choice. There’s no reason to be afraid.”

  “Yeah, right.” He shakes his head. “And you’re probably afraid of me.”

  “Well . . . ,” I mutter. “Have you seen yourself?”

  He smiles bitterly. “I’m just a soldier, Catarina. I’m muscle and training, but you’re a coder, like Lachlan. Most people are afraid of the guy with the gun, but the person they should be afraid of is the one with a genkit cable. It’s software that runs the show in this world, not hardware. People like you are always in control.”

  I drop my eyes, remembering Cole’s face when I first jacked him into my genkit. He was nervous, sweating. He flinched when the cable connected. I didn’t think about it, but it should have been obvious that he was afraid of what I’d do to him. I’ve seen the scars on his chest. He didn’t get those from combat.

  He got them in a lab.

  Guilt settles in my stomach. I’ve been afraid of Cole since he arrived, but he hasn’t even come close to hurting me. And what have I done? I used a dose to blow out a window and slice his shoulders to shreds. I jacked him into a genkit and ran electricity through his body. I dumped a Trojan into his panel and knocked him out with a word.

  Of course he’s afraid of me.

  I chew my lip. “I’m sorry. I guess we haven’t got off to a good start.”

  “That’s a hell of an understatement.”

  I hold his gaze. “Look, my father left a plan to release the vaccine. There’s a note in your panel that explains everything. Read it, you’ll see.”

  His eyes glaze over, flitting back and forth as he drops into a VR session. He doesn’t say anything for a long time, and then his eyes focus on mine. “It says all we need is your father’s notes and a clonebox.”

  I pause, recalling the note. Cloneboxes are rare machines for studying code that’s running inside live cells, and they’re not easy to find. But that’s not all my father told us to do. “No, he said we need a lab. He said there was one left set up for us, somewhere in Canada. He didn’t leave the directions, but there must be something to tell us where it is.”

  “I know where it is,” Cole mutters.

  “How?”

  “There’s a Cartaxus lab in Canada. A place he used to work that’s abandoned now. That must be what he’s talking about.”

  “Okay,” I say, nodding. “So we just need to gather all of my father’s notes that we can, find the lab and drive there, and pick up a clonebox on the way.”

  Cole just watches me. “There’s no we, Catarina. Cartaxus has cloneboxes and labs, and I don’t think they’re going to restrict the vaccine. I don’t see why I can’t copy the notes, bring them back to Cartaxus, and leave you to follow this plan on your own.”

  I sigh. “I need the copy of the vaccine that’s in your arm. And besides, I can’t make it to Canada on my bike.”

  “Why don’t you ask your terrorist friends for help?”

  I bunch my hands into fists. “I told you, they’re not terrorists. All they do is distribute medical code.”

  “Someone attacked your father’s lab.”

  “I know, and I meant it when I said it wasn’t the Skies, but that doesn’t mean I trust them with this. They’re disorganized, their code is sloppy, and Cartaxus is probably listening in on their network, anyway. If my father wanted their help, he would have said so, but he didn’t. All he said was that you and I have to work on this together.”

  Cole leans back against the counter, sighing. “Well, we’re off to a fine start.”

  I scrape my hands over my face. He’s right—this is ridiculous. How am I supposed to drive with him across the country when I can’t even bring myself to uncuff him?

  There has to be a way for us to work on this together. My father’s plan relies on it. The whole world relies on it.

  I shift on the floor until I’m sitting cross-legged on the concrete, facing him. “Why are you even here, Cole?”

  He lifts an eyebrow. “I thought we went over that. Looming apocalypse, unlocking the vaccine, remember?”

  “No, I mean—why you? You were safe in a base with airlocks and food, and it’s clear that you don’t want any part of this plan. My father must have chosen you for a reason, and I need to know what it is.”

  He tilts his head back, watching me. “Why should I tell you?”

  “Looming apocalypse, unlocking the vaccine. Remember?”

  His lips curl in the faintest of smiles. He looks me up and down, his ice-blue eyes bloodshot after the command I used to knock him out. “I’m not the heartless soldier you think I am, and I’m not an idiot either. We’re doomed if we lose this vaccine. Of course I’m going to do everything I can to unlock it.”

  “So my father knew you’d pack up and go AWOL because you’re a hero?”

  He presses his lips together. “There’s another reason too.”

  “Go on.”

  “How about you uncuff me, and we can talk?”

  I let out a snort. “Not a chance, soldier. Nice try, though.”

  He grimaces, shifting on the floor, the handcuffs rattling against the lab counter’s leg. “I was planning to leave Cartaxus anyway. Someone I cared about went missing and might be on the surface, and I want to find them. Your father knew that. He was going to help me get out so I could look for them.”

  “Oh,” I say. “Is it someone he knew too?”

  Cole nods, then pauses, as though he hadn’t meant to tell me that. His tone and the tight look in his eyes tell me he doesn’t want to talk about whoever it is he wants to find. It’s obviously personal, and it might be irrelevant, but I can’t rule out the chance that it’s important somehow—another clue my father left for me.

  My mind spins back over the conversations we’ve had. I don’t think Cole ever mentioned any family or friends, but there was that girl in the sketchbook. I glance up at the ceiling, trying to remember the name written in careful script beneath each drawing.

  “Is it Jun Bei?”

  He stiffens. He doesn’t need to answer—it’s clear from his response that I’ve guessed correctly. He had the same fierce reaction when he found me flipping through the sketchbook, as though seeing her face or saying her name was an intrusion into his privacy. Whatever happened between him and this girl clearly isn’t over. The look in his eyes when I said her name was like an open wound.

  After a long, tense moment, Cole nods. “Yes, it’s her. We were separated years ago, and she’s not in the Cartaxus system, so I know the chances of her being alive are low. But she could have survived out here, holed up somewhere, like you.”

  I nod, lacing my fingers together, this new piece of the puzzle sliding into place. I’m starting to understand why Cole was such a perfect choice by my father. He’s capable of protecting me, that much I’m sure of, but it’s what he’s driven by that makes him special.

  It’s his hope.

  Even after two straight years of horror and death, Cole still believes that a girl he once knew might still be alive. In this world, that’s a wild hope. Barely more than a prayer. He was willing to leave the safety of Cartaxus to risk his life on the most impossible of chances. If I can find a way to link Cole’s hope to the plan my father left us, something tells me nothing will stand in our way.

  I unfold my hands, staring at Cole. “If Jun Bei is on the surface, Cartaxus isn’t going to give her the vaccine. She’s vulnerable every mi
nute we waste arguing here. The only way you can protect her is by helping me release the code freely to everyone, not let Cartaxus keep it to themselves. That’s why my father chose you for this mission.”

  He shakes his head. “I don’t think Cartaxus is going to restrict access to the vaccine.”

  “Are you willing to bet Jun Bei’s life on that?”

  A muscle in his jaw twitches. “I don’t even know if she’s alive.”

  I sit back. He’s right. I can practically see a candle of hope glowing inside him, but it’s not enough to justify going against everything he’s been trained for. There has to be something more than this. If my father was going to help Cole find this girl, he must have had some faith that she was alive, as well.

  I slide my genkit closer. “Do you know her panel’s ID?”

  “I’ve already searched for it everywhere. If she’s connected to a server, she’ll be masking it.”

  “Oh, a mask,” I say, flipping my genkit open. “How could I ever hope to get past that? What’s her ID?”

  He stares at me silently, unimpressed by my sarcasm.

  I sigh. “Look, I’m just trying to help. Maybe I can find her.”

  He closes his eyes and starts reciting the hexadecimal code linked to Jun Bei’s panel. I type it into a file in my genkit, then ping the Skies network, logging in. If Jun Bei is on the surface, she’ll probably be using the Skies’ satellites. My genkit’s screen fades to black with a single, blinking cursor, and my fingers drop to the keyboard, punching out commands.

  First, I have to navigate through the ancient systems the Skies uses to control their satellites. Jun Bei’s ID has never pinged the network as far as I can tell from a quick scan, but if she’s masking it, I’d need to run a recursive check across the most common encryptions. I load up a handful of scripts, grabbing scraps of code, running them until my genkit’s fan whines with the effort. Millions of users, millions of IDs, thousands of them masked. Countless pings across the network every second of every day . . .

  “Oh,” I say, freezing.

  Cole draws in a sharp breath. I look up to see his face paling. “What? What did you find?”