Already he was getting lost between who he was and who he was becoming. His processors bogged down trying to make sense of it all.
“Do you think you might be wrong?” Amma said, scrutinising him.
“I’m neither wrong nor right. I conclude from the results of the data. Before the breach, there was an attempt to get into the systems by a user spoofing themselves as a network node. That was quickly snuffed out, but shortly after that came a brute-force attack that broke the encryption within minutes. Given the complexity of the security and the type of attack that breached it, there isn’t enough computing power on Earth to have managed it. Therefore, the logical conclusion is that it wasn’t a computer at all, but something infinitely more powerful. Something that knew how the encryption worked—the entity that had created it. Elliot Robertson.”
“I see,” Amma said. “How do you suppose he magically appeared after all these years since we had him destroyed?”
Jachz noted a nervousness within her. Her eyes dashed furtively, and her perspiration had increased noticeably. Her right hand tapped against the edge of the slate. Nolan, likewise, seemed perturbed, with sharp glances to his son.
It appeared to Jachz that they weren’t entirely convinced they had successfully destroyed Elliot Robertson. And if what he concluded was true, that would give the Family a huge problem.
Robertson’s existence and knowledge of their systems could prevent them from achieving their goals. They’d already been struck a blow with the destruction of their satellite and the attack on the dome. Their resources were tightly stretched as it was.
“Well?” Amma said. “Where do you think he is? In the station’s systems? On what network?”
“I do not yet know. Are you tasking me with tracking him down?”
“If he exists,” Nolan said, “then yes. In the meantime, we need to secure the station from the possibility he might still be active. Jachz, get a team of engineers on this right away and oversee this task immediately. We need to ensure we’re safe from future attacks. Our continued existence hinges on this.”
“It won’t work,” Tyronius said. “Jachz is just a low-level AI. If this threat is real, he’s not up to the task. He couldn’t even manage the ambassadorial role on Earth without getting himself killed. Let’s face it. He’s not the greatest AI we’ve ever created. We need something more robust.”
Jachz’s core temperature rose three and a half degrees. Tension increased in his face muscles, and his hand clenched. Tyronius’s observations, as if Jachz wasn’t even there, as if he didn’t matter at all, drew out a feeling of anger.
This was the first time he had felt insulted, and the first time he wished to do something about it. But he instructed his software to create a passive response program so that any time he felt these feelings, his body, or vehicle, would not betray his emotions.
“What do you suggest, then?” Amma said. “And don’t tell me…”
“We need to fight fire with fire. Use our copy of Robertson’s mind.”
“Have you forgotten what happened?” Nolan said. “The damn thing near destroyed us all.”
“I agree with your father,” Amma said. “It’s far too risky.”
A sly smile stretched Tyronius’s thin lips. His small, dark eyes and sharp nose gave him the impression of a predatory animal.
Jachz could tell he was hiding something.
It also occurred to him that his own evolution of emotions and feelings had brought him a new insight into others that he previously hadn’t had.
He recognised the subterfuge, the unspoken thoughts within Tyronius. His facial micro-expressions gave him away.
Both Amma and Nolan seemed to notice the same thing.
“What have you done?” Nolan said.
“Just hear me out before you react,” Tyronius said.
That seemed to make Amma and Nolan even more nervous. Their faces became taut, almost as if they were expecting physical harm. “Go on,” Amma said.
“While in hibernation, I made a copy of the copy. I created a secure sandbox virtual machine and ran the new copy, but with altered code. See, while the entity is suspended, the quantum code no longer displays its quantum state. It’s inert. The code is set at that point in time. It’s taken nearly four years, but I found the source of the corruption, the centre of Elliot Robertson’s so-called madness.”
Tyronius’s parents stared at him with a mix of horror, pride, and awe.
“I patched the bad code, and for the last two months, the new entity has run safely within the virtual machine with no signs of corruption. It’s an entirely new identity. And it lives! In servitude to me… to us! It’s this new entity that I think we should use to secure our systems.”
“Christ! What have you done?” Amma said, seemingly unable to believe what her son was saying.
“Its mind is capable of things that any AI like Jachz or the others just can’t manage. With this new technology”—Tyronius was clenching his fist now, his voice rising as he got into the stride of his speech—“we can finally break the barriers to the next step. We can evolve our technology again, like we did the first time around with Elliot Robertson before he went mad. This is our chance to once again leap forward. Let me use my creation.”
“This is simply unbelievable,” Nolan said. “I can’t believe you’d go behind our backs like this. You of all people!”
“Trust in me for a change. Look what your precious Seca, Jasper and Gerry did—all three betrayed you. But I remained here with you, had faith in your vision. I did this for us.”
Nolan swallowed, wiping at his forehead. “This… I… I can’t believe you kept this from us. You could have endangered us all.”
“Father, it’s safe; trust me. I can show you.”
“Your father is right, Tyro. This is incredible that you would have taken such a risk without consulting with us. What is the current status of this—”
Tyronius stepped in. “I called it Kabuki.”
Amma raised her eyebrow. “Are you saying you’re considering it female?”
Jachz searched his data. Kabuki was Tyro’s sister. She’d died before they retreated to the station full time. Before they had the technology to cure her illness: a degenerative disease that ate away at her bones and organs. Tyronius, being the eldest of Amma and Nolan’s children, felt protective of Kabuki, his first sibling.
“Christ, Tyro, this is not right,” Nolan said. His eyes appeared wetter than usual. “How could you?”
“She was my family, too!” Tyronius said, standing from the table. “If this is how I choose to keep her memory alive, then I will damn well do it. You two seem happy to scrub her from your memories, but I can’t.”
Nolan reached out for his son, but Tyronius stepped away and stared out of the window. “What have you done, son?” Nolan asked. Even Jachz, with his young insights, could tell Tyronius hadn’t told the full story.
“You didn’t…”
Tyronius turned and looked down at his father and his mother. “I modelled her personality. Imprinted it onto the digital entity. She’s entirely different to Robertson. She has empathy for me, for us. She’s one of us. She’ll help.”
Amma shook her head and sighed. “It’s too late to undo what you’ve done. We need to assess this.”
She turned to Jachz. “What do you think, Jachz? If what Tyro says is true and Kabuki is stable, could she be of help to secure our systems?”
“I see no reason why not.”
It was the truth. A posthuman digital entity, if it wasn’t corrupted like Elliot, would indeed be an asset. But deep down, that feeling of anxiety bubbled up again, altering his logic gates into a state of ambiguity. “The question is, however, can this Kabuki remain stable when let out into the wider network? Elliot Robertson was stable while within the confines of the servers made by Hajime and Sakura. It was when he was exposed to the vastness of the world’s networks that his codebase altered—there appears to be something out there
beyond servers that changed him.”
“She’s nothing like Robertson,” Tyronius said, glaring at Jachz.
“Her code is his, is it not?” Jachz replied.
“Damn you!” Tyronius slammed his palms down on the edge of the table, leaned over and stared at Jachz, his face twisting in hate. “What the hell do you know? You’re just an AI, Jachz. Artificial. Created by us. Kabuki is a real consciousness, not just code.”
Jachz was about to retort, but he pulled back and remained impassive. He wanted to yell back that he, too, could feel and emote, and that he was developing his own consciousness. He wasn’t just code.
“That’s enough,” Nolan said, pulling Tyronius away from the table.
“Jachz, Tyro, you’re both coming with me,” Amma said. “We’ll take a look at this Kabuki and decide from there. I’m not having dissension among us. AI, human, posthuman, it doesn’t matter. We’re all working for the same goals. We all need to pull together if we’re to survive and see our way into the future.”
They dispersed from the room.
Jachz walked down the corridors, heading for his lab cubicle, when he realised that if Kabuki was as functional as Tyronius had said, then it was highly probably she, or it, would see through Jachz’s pretence. His secret would be revealed, and he’d find himself locked in a virtual machine for research and experimentation just like Kabuki.
He had to think of a contingency, and fast.
Chapter 5
Jamaican Quarter, Hong Kong
Gabe kept the Commodore under his right arm and reached for a pistol with his left when one of the Scarabs stepped forward and pointed a shotgun at Ezra.
“No one fucking move,” the woman said. Her ruby-coloured hair, wild and long down her back, blew in the evening breeze. “Otherwise the old man dies.”
Kobi and three of his thugs stepped across the border, their guns aimed at Gabe—and the woman. Kobi smiled. His pupils were wide and blank, clearly high on something more than just a bit of weed.
“Waa gwaan, sister? Why’d ya need to go do someting stupid, eh?”
“Kobi, I can’t let your thieves just escape like this. Figgy’s overstepped his mark. There’s repercussions.”
“Ya outnumbered, sister. Wid dem guns of yours, ya won’t last a minute. Is dis fool worth dying for?”
The Scarab woman’s gun pressed into Gabe’s back. He closed his eyes and calmed his racing heart, thought back to his previous life.
Thought back to when he was Shadow.
The blood… the kills… the rage.
He opened his eyes.
Kobi’s dumb grin set him off, and Gabe became Shadow once more.
He slowly placed the Commodore 64 on the ground, but then, with a burst of energy, spun round, ducking below the woman’s shotgun.
As he rose out of his sweeping move, he pulled the pistol from his pocket, arced his arm up and over, firing off three rounds.
The woman blinked once before slumping to the ground.
Chunks of her skull splattered against a pair of Scarab members behind her.
Gabe turned to Kobi and took advantage of his drugged state. The Jamaican was too slow. Gabe disarmed him and rolled forward into the group of Scarabs, pulling four times on the trigger. Three fell, clutching their chests and faces.
Rising to his feet, Gabe leapt to his right and avoided retaliation fire. He pushed his father out of the way of a shot that went through and struck one of Figgy’s enforcers.
Petal was already moving now, her spikes extended, flashing and whirling as she too reverted to her deadly persona, cutting through Scarabs like they were mannequins.
Kobi yelled and grabbed a rifle from one of his allies.
Gabe dragged Ezra beyond the border into Figgy’s zone, grabbing the Commodore as he went.
— Let ’em fight it out, girl. We need to go, Gabe sent.
The blurring form of Petal dashed between the ensuing melee as Kobi and his men rushed across the street to mop up the last half-dozen Scarabs.
With the battle behind them, Gabe led Ezra and Petal to Figgy’s, feeling physically sick at what he had to do. He’d kept up his promise not to spill blood for a little over four months. He knew then that for someone like him in this world, violence was unavoidable—unless he drastically changed his life.
That would come later. For now, he had a deal to conclude.
A symphony of gun blasts created a soundtrack to their journey.
But then that was inevitable. Figgy knew that; otherwise he wouldn’t have sent Kobi and his gang members to face off at the border. He probably thought he could get rid of Gabe before concluding the deal.
Gabe didn’t go away so easily, and now the gang boss had a reckoning coming his way.
***
The atmosphere changed as soon as Gabe entered Figgy’s room.
The guards had barred Petal and Ezra, and wanting to avoid any more bloodshed, Gabe agreed to see him on his own.
He clutched the gang boss’s prize beneath his arm and stepped forward.
“You did good,” Charles Figueroa said, nodding his head, his dreadlocks shaking with the movement. The interwoven cables clicked and clacked against his metal-plated interface sections. He appeared more cyborg than human. “Bring the machine here.”
Three steps and Gabe was just a metre in front of Figgy, Gabe’s tall frame making the other have to crane his neck to look up to him.
Gabe handed him the Commodore 64 and its accompanying tape drive. “What’s so special about this?” Gabe asked. “It’s just a toy these days.”
“To you, perhaps.” Figgy took the machine and placed it across his lap, running his gnarled fingers across its beige chassis. The keys clacked beneath his touch. “To me, however, it’s something truly special.”
“How so?”
“That’s really none of your business.” Figueroa placed the computer on the floor by the side of his wheelchair. Turning his attention back to Gabe, a smile creeped across his cracked lips. “But to conclude our business, I ought to give you what you came here for.”
Every muscle in Gabe’s body tensed.
This was it… finally, he would see his mother again, but he didn’t like the look on Figgy’s face. It was the smile of someone who knew far more than was good for him. “Well? Where is she?”
The gang boss shifted his gaze to the right and raised a crooked finger, indicating a worn and scuffed wooden door with a handle so rusted it looked like the merest of touches would turn it to dust. Over the hum of the Cray supercomputer’s cooling fans, Gabe made out two voices.
Both female, and one definitely belonging to his mother.
Gabe’s heart lurched with recognition and hope. The nape of his neck tingled as he pictured his mother cradling him as a child within the shelter. Her eyes wide with a smile staring down at him… her mouth moving with the shapes of a child’s rhyme…
The door grew larger in his vision.
He was barely aware of his own body as he walked closer, his arm stretched. The door handle felt warm and gritty in his hand. Gripping it carefully, he lowered the handle and opened the door inward.
Light spilled out, contrasting the shadowed darkness of Figgy’s room. The sudden change temporarily blinded Gabe.
Through squinted eyes he made out two figures: one in a bed, and one standing to the side. Their voices stopped. The atmosphere of the room changed to one of surprise and silent tension.
Words stuck in Gabe’s throat.
He closed the door behind him and blinked as his eyes got used to the brightness. He noticed now that it was coming from a large, overhead OLED light panel attached to the wooden ceiling.
Rotten floorboards and whitewashed walls gave the room a strange decrepit clinical feel. The figure by the bed turned to face him. Her brown skin shone in the white light. A curving highlight arced down her bob-cut hair. Large, brown eyes blinked when she caught Gabe’s attention.
They locked eyes, and Gabe
saw into the past.
It couldn’t be…
He never…
“Gabriel? Is that you, son?”
“Mum?” Gabe stepped closer, ignoring the young woman staring at him. His mother lay in the bed, a number of tubes coming from her arm. A drip of some sort fed into her veins. Despite that, her face was a beacon of warmth and happiness.
Tears flowed down her cheeks. “I tried to get word to you,” his mother said, reaching out her arms to him.
“It’s fine… I found you.” Gabe hugged her close and fought back tears of his own. Tears of relief, of love, and confusion. “Are ya okay?”
“Don’t you worry about me. I’m just a little dehydrated. Mr. Figueroa’s helped me out.”
“She’s doing great, Gabriel,” the younger woman said.
He couldn’t turn around and look at her.
Gabe’s mother must have seen the hesitancy in his face and relaxed her hug, settling back against the headrest of the bed, pillows bunched up behind her. “Gabriel, son,” she started, and he knew what was coming, but couldn’t do or say anything to stop it. “I want you to meet… your daughter.”
My daughter!
“It’s okay,” the girl said. “I won’t call you dad.” She tried to break the tension with humour, but the words continued to ring around inside Gabe’s head—his daughter. It was true the moment he saw the girl.
He knew it instantly from her eyes.
They were the eyes of the only woman he loved intimately. The woman he had left behind when he set out for resources—and never came back.
Selena. Dear sweet, troubled Selena.
Gabe had heard on the grapevine that she had committed suicide a year after he left. She always had problems. A real wild girl, which was one of the things that had attracted him to her in the first place. They were two sides of the same coin.
The guilt from her death had been a turning point within him. It was the catalyst for him to stay away and do what he did best—hack, fight, and survive.
Code Breakers: Delta Page 4