by Emily Suvada
Cole’s eyes glaze over. “Crick has the clonebox and just kicked off the simulation. He and Leoben got into a scuffle with some guards, but they’re okay. They’re making their way to the parking levels now. It’s time to leave.” He swings his backpack on, then lifts mine up so I can slide my arms through the straps. I shift it on my shoulders nervously.
“You haven’t answered me, Cole. Is anyone going to get hurt?”
He gives me a quick, false smile. “Of course they won’t.”
CHAPTER 26
COLE HURRIES INTO THE HALLWAY, where a wave of civilians are running to their rooms, swarming through the corridors. “We’re going to the elevators,” he says, pushing through a crowd of people. “I’ve got the route mapped out. Stay close to me.”
I jog after him, clutching the backpack’s straps, a twinge of pain flickering in my bandaged arm. I use the pain to sharpen my focus. Cole leads the way, following some virtual map in his panel that I can’t see, guiding me through a seemingly endless series of hallways. All the apartment doors are open, showing me the tiny rooms inside. Hand-knitted blankets are tossed over bunks, and the occasional dog watches us from behind a knee-high gate. The families inside are huddled together, their eyes glazed over, probably waiting for more instructions to tell them they’re safe.
But I don’t know if they are. Cole’s tone has driven a splinter of fear through me. I don’t know anything about the simulation we’re running. It could be harmless, but from what I’ve heard about Jun Bei, it sounds like safety was the least of her concerns.
And I don’t want to put these people in danger just to get us out of here.
“Almost there,” Cole shouts, finally turning into a hallway I recognize. At the far end I can see the faux sunlight and greenery outside. Cole picks up his pace, running now that our path has cleared, with most of the residents already back in their rooms. A little boy at one of the doors gives me a plaintive look as I pass. He’s trying to push his door closed, but it won’t budge.
It suddenly occurs to me that all the doors are open.
The lockdown must have opened them so people could get back into their rooms. But that can’t be right. These rooms are designed to be airtight to keep the civilians safe. Surely the most important thing to do in a lockdown is seal the doors, right?
“Just two more blocks,” Cole calls back.
I jog faster to keep up with him, glancing nervously at the doors. They’re still open, and now more people are pulling on them, calling out to one another. They must have run lockdown drills before, and they obviously expect their doors to be closed by now. There must be a delay, some conflict with the simulation. Any minute now the system will surely override it.
We jog out of the building and into an empty street. Tables and chairs lie on their sides outside a café, food splattered across the cobblestones. Everything has been knocked down and tossed aside in the stampede of people running back to their rooms. Cole waves his arm, leading me down the street, past a recreation center where families dressed in gym gear are streaming out.
“Make way!” Cole yells. We turn into the square with the wall of elevators that Leoben and I first came through. A crowd has formed, waiting to get back to their floors. Cole must be sending out some kind of virtual message, because they move back instantly when they see him, clearing us a path.
“Is this a drill?” someone asks.
“Please stay calm, sir.” Cole pulls me into an empty elevator. He presses his hand to the side, and the doors slowly begin to slide shut. “Proceed to your quarters and seal the doors.”
“But my door won’t seal, sir! There’s somethi—” a woman shouts, but the elevator closes, cutting her off.
I turn to Cole. “The apartment doors weren’t closing.”
“They’re on a redundant system. These floors have a dozen levels of airtight security.”
“And exactly how many of them are we breaching to get out?”
“It’ll be okay, Cat. We’ll be out in a few minutes, and this will all be over.”
I bring my hand up to chew my thumbnail. It’s not us I’m worried about. It’s the eighty thousand Homestake residents living here without immunity. The airlock system is the only thing keeping them safe, and I have a sinking feeling that Jun Bei’s simulation has compromised it.
The elevator shudders to a stop, and the doors ping open, letting in a puff of warm, humid air. A woman and a little boy rush in from what looks like an aquaponics floor. Shelves of plants stretch out as far as I can see, built above glass tanks filled with tiny, iridescent fish.
“Ma’am, you need to—” Cole says, and curses as the doors close.
The woman pulls off a pair of rubber gloves, wiping her forehead. “Is there a problem, sir?”
“I’ve commandeered this elevator.”
“Oh,” she says. “Sorry, I didn’t know. We were in the hothouse. My son was helping me with the tomatoes.”
“It’s not your fault,” Cole mutters. “We weren’t supposed to stop.”
I shoot him a worried glance. It sounds like there are some holes in this plan. First the residential doors won’t seal—now the elevators are glitching.
“Where are we going?” the woman asks as we keep rising. “That was my floor. Why aren’t we stopping?”
Cole doesn’t reply.
“What’s happening?” The woman’s voice grows frantic as we rise beyond the residential floors. “We can’t go up—it’s not safe. These elevators aren’t even supposed to go this high.”
“They do in an emergency, ma’am.”
The woman’s grip on her son tightens, and they back into the corner. I shoot Cole a questioning glance, but he just shakes his head. We rise for what feels like an eternity, at least another thirty floors, until the doors finally slide open to an underground parking lot. The walls and floor have red diagonal stripes painted across them, with signs warning that this floor is exposed to untreated air. A massive Wash-and-Blast airlock lies between us and the rest of the floor, complete with the space-grade circular doors.
But they’re open.
The lights are off, and the airlock doors are wide open. A gust of cold wind blows straight into the elevator. At the far end of the parking lot a ramp leads up to the ground, where I can make out a hint of daylight. The woman clasps her hands over her son’s mouth, letting out a scream.
They just got hit with a gust of wind from outside.
“What the hell?” I grab Cole’s arm, staring through the gaping Wash-and-Blast at the parking lot. “Why is this airlock open? This elevator goes right down to residential.”
“We’re still safe,” Cole says to both me and the mother, gesturing to a green light on the wall. “This air is clear.”
“But it’s open! There are eighty thousand people here, Cole. This isn’t safe.”
The mother nods, her face pale. “We can’t go back down, sir. It’s against protocol. We need to be quarantined.”
Cole sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. He grabs a panel in the elevator’s side and wrenches it open, revealing a glowing red button underneath. “Hit this once we’re out, and it’ll take you to a safe zone.”
“Are we under attack?” the woman asks. “Will my family be okay?”
Cole pulls me out of the elevator, a muscle twitching in his jaw. “Just stay calm. I’m sure everything will be fine.” He punches a button on the wall, and the elevator doors close, taking the woman and her son away.
I run through the Wash-and-Blast corridor to the parking lot and spin around, covering my mouth in disbelief.
Our airlock wasn’t the only one. Twelve massive Wash-and-Blasts are open, all leading to elevator shafts that go down to the residential floors. The fail-safes have been overridden. The whole compound is compromised. Below me, eighty thousand people are still trying to seal their doors.
But they won’t be able to. The kick simulation has broken every layer of Homestake’s security, just to get us out of he
re.
“Wait here,” Cole says. “I’ll get the jeep. Leoben and Crick have already left with the clonebox. Are you ready?”
“No,” I spit, whirling on him. “All the airlocks are open, aren’t they? That was Jun Bei’s escape plan, wasn’t it? She opened everything to get out faster. Cole, there’s dozens of second-stagers on the perimeter, and nobody here is immune.”
“Why are you angry at me?” he snaps. “You’re the one who wanted to come here, remember? I wanted to stay away. You’re the one who agreed to this plan.”
My cheeks burn. He’s right. I’m the one who made the decision. I chose to come here and steal a clonebox instead of finding one on the surface. The thought just makes me more determined to stop this. To make it right and keep these people safe.
I drop my backpack, dragging out my genkit. “I’m shutting this down.”
Cole shakes his head. “Cat, these people are safe. Homestake has a mile-wide buffer zone.”
“And that’s not enough, not anymore. The virus is evolving, and the clouds are getting bigger. If those people on the perimeter blow while these airlocks are open, the cloud could make it inside, and then there’ll be no stopping it. I need to kill the simulation.”
I set my genkit on the concrete floor, flicking up its wireless antenna. One of the viruses I’ve written to hack Cartaxus for the Skies should be able to force an emergency closure. The screen flashes as it boots up, connecting to Homestake’s network, logging in automatically. The genkit still has Dax’s login details from when he scanned my panel. That’s going to make this a lot easier.
“Cat, we don’t have time for this. We need to get out of here.”
“Then go and get the jeep.” I keep my eyes glued to the screen, navigating into Homestake’s security systems.
He lets out a growl of frustration. “Okay, you have two minutes and then I’m dragging you out of here before the guards arrive.”
“That’s fine,” I say. “I don’t need long.”
He drops his backpack and runs through the parking lot toward a row of gleaming vehicles. My fingers are a blur on the keyboard as I search through Homestake’s systems. Dax’s login is like magic; he has top-level clearance. His password ushers me into every server, every database. My genkit’s fan hums as I navigate into the airlock system and load up the list of emergency protocols. The screen flashes, showing me a dozen different fail-safes I can trigger to close the airlocks. I pick the simplest one and start running it. If my intuition is correct, then the airlocks would be designed so that opening them is difficult, but closing them should be almost trivial.
Almost.
A few commands in, I find myself fighting against what must be part of Jun Bei’s kick simulation. It’s a virus, that’s for sure. It’s the most sophisticated piece of malware I’ve ever seen. Dax must have dumped it somewhere clever, because it somehow got instant access to everything. Not just the elevators and the airlocks—it’s in the ventilation systems, the lighting, the communications grid, even though it looks like the servers for those systems are separated by firewalls. It’s shorting out circuits and wreaking chaos and confusion in every system I can see, and I have no idea how it got to them so fast. My hacks sometimes took hours, and I’d do preparations for days.
This code has taken over Homestake in minutes.
I throw a handful of commands at the airlock sensors, but the simulation smacks me down before I finish typing. My genkit’s screen flashes, the text blurring before my eyes as the simulation morphs, spinning around to attack my connection.
It knows I’m here. This thing is smart, and now it’s coming for me. I yank out the genkit’s antenna, but I’m a heartbeat too late.
The screen dies.
“No!” I shout, jabbing the power key. The genkit boots up again, but it won’t be safe to use the wireless connection anymore. From outside, I hear the distant sound of gunfire, followed by a resounding crack. It might have been a grenade, or it might have been one of the infected people on the perimeter detonating. Either way, I’m running out of time. I turn around to look for Cole, and the glow of headlights splashes over me.
He found the jeep. He’s coming back.
“Okay, think,” I mutter, closing my eyes, trying to remember the list I pulled up of the ways to trigger an airlock closure. There were a handful of options that bypassed the networks, that Jun Bei’s code can’t possibly stop. A switch near the guard station. A lever in the lookout tower. Explosions in the Wash-and-Blasts . . .
An explosion. That’ll do it. If I can crack one of the glass panels in a Wash-and-Blast, it’ll trigger the lockdown the guard warned me about. I don’t know if it’ll jerk the whole system back to life, but it’s worth a try. I don’t have time for anything else.
The jeep races across the parking lot, screeching to a stop behind me. Cole’s door flies open. “Time’s up, we have to go. They’re coming for us.”
“I need a bomb,” I say, turning to him, still crouched beside my genkit. “Or a grenade, anything. I need to trigger one of these airlocks.”
“Are you kidding? Get in the jeep, Cat.”
“I’m not leaving until these are closed. I’m serious. I need a bomb to blow up one of the airlocks.”
Cole jumps out of the jeep and grabs his backpack. “I’m not blowing anything up, Catarina. We need to get out now. There’ll be soldiers swarming through here any second.”
“Please, Cole!”
He tosses his backpack into the jeep and comes back for mine. “It’s over, Cat. You tried. Now we need to run.”
He picks up my backpack, striding around the jeep to throw it in the back, and I look down at my trusty, beat-up genkit. The keyboard is full of crumbs, still crusted with my dried blood, and the duct tape holding the screen together is starting to peel off. It’s a wreck, but it’s my wreck. Without it, I can’t hack or code. It’s my sidekick, my lifeline.
But if I can get it to self-destruct, it’s also a tiny bomb.
Before I can give myself time to hesitate, I yank out the genkit’s needle-tipped wire and jab it into the side of my knee. It flies out of my grip, burying itself in my skin, squirming into the socket buried under my kneecap. My leg twitches as the needle tip locks into place with a click. The genkit’s screen flashes.
EMERGENCY CODE ONLY.
There’s no panel in my arm, which means there’s nothing to check the code I’m about to send into my system. A panel isn’t just a computer; it’s a gatekeeper, stopping toxic code and nanites from being dumped into my body. Without a panel, I have no safety checks. I could send myself nanites that’ll chew the flesh right off my bones, that could swarm through my body and devour my cells.
And that’s exactly what I’m doing.
A few keystrokes are all it takes to prime the lasers, to make sure that when the genkit detonates, it’ll go off like a rocket. I tap out a dozen commands, sourcing malicious code from my stored files, wrapping them up into a virus I can send into my knee. A butchered, weaponized piece of code that will attack my cells in the same way my father bubbled the skin off my back. I don’t know how far it will spread from my knee, but I know it’s going to hurt. It’ll open up a gaping wound in my leg, but that doesn’t matter.
Tonight, after we get to the lab and unlock the vaccine, I’ll be dead. A busted knee will be the least of my concerns.
The needle-tipped wire vibrates as the commands chug through the genkit, dumping a stream of nanites into my knee. It only takes a second until the genkit’s internal safety checks realize what I’m doing, and the emergency system kicks in.
ILLEGAL OPERATION DETECTED. SELF-DESTRUCT SEQUENCE INITIATED.
HALT OPERATION TO PREVENT SELF-DESTRUCT.
That’s the thing about genkits—they’re not weapons, and they’re not designed to be. If the machine thinks you’re trying to kill someone with it, it’ll blow itself up. Years of lawsuits, judges, protests, and hastily written laws led to the manufacturers burying tiny bombs
inside every processor. Rather than run illegal code, it’ll explode with a puff of smoke.
Hopefully the blast will be big enough to close the Wash-and-Blast.
The genkit’s screen flashes. White-hot pain flares in my knee. The reader wire tries to eject from the socket, but I hold it in, gritting my teeth. The pain grows, spreading to my calf. Just a few more seconds . . .
THIS MACHINE WILL SELF-DESTRUCT IN 10, 9 . . .
“Finally,” I gasp, yanking the wire out, crawling on my good knee, shoving my genkit into the gaping Wash-and-Blast.
“What are you doing?” Cole shouts. “Get in the jeep. We need to get out of here!”
“I will,” I murmur. “I just . . . I don’t think I can walk.”
“What have you done?” Cole stares at the genkit, his eyes flashing to black.
SELF-DESTRUCT IN 5, 4 . . .
Cole’s arm slides around my waist, yanking me from the floor, and the parking lot spins as he throws me into the passenger seat. The genkit’s screen flashes red. Cole races around the hood to the driver’s side, and then everything seems to happen at once.
My genkit detonates in a flash of light, belching clouds of smoke, and a deafening roar cuts through the air. The concrete floor beneath us shakes. Cole hurls himself into the driver’s seat, slamming the door shut behind him. I grab the side of my seat, twisting around to stare back as the jeep surges forward, bouncing up the ramp and outside. That was a hell of an explosion for a laptop genkit, but it worked. The steel, circular doors of the Wash-and-Blasts are slamming shut.
“I did it,” I breathe, still staring back as we burst into the wasteland, my entire leg throbbing with pain. “It closed the airlocks, Cole.”
He doesn’t reply. He’s probably still angry, even though he gave me no choice. I’ve just destroyed my knee because he wouldn’t use a damn grenade. I turn back, starting to yank up my pant leg to see the damage, and freeze.
The roar I heard wasn’t from the genkit. It wasn’t my little explosion that made the bunker’s floor shake. That was something else, something bigger. It’s rising as a cloud on Homestake’s perimeter, but it can’t possibly be what I think it is.