by K. F. Breene
ALSO BY K.F. BREENE
Finding Paradise Series
Fate of Perfection
The Warrior Chronicles Series
Chosen
Hunted
Shadow Lands
Invasion
Siege
Freedom (coming soon)
Darkness Series
Into the Darkness
Braving the Elements
On a Razor’s Edge
Demons
The Council
Shadow Watcher
Jonas
Charles
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2017 by Hazy Dawn Press, Inc.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by 47North, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and 47North are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13 9781503943636
ISBN-10: 1503943631
Cover design by M. S. Corley
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Epilogue
About the Author
Chapter 1
The small orb opened with a gush. Millicent leaned forward, surveying the interior for what seemed like the millionth time. The object was from Toton, one of the three conglomerates in control of Earth, and she’d been analyzing it off and on since she’d settled on Paradise. Until recently, she hadn’t taken as much time as she’d wanted to really dig into it. She had many demands on the new planet, but Toton was waging a destructive, high-casualty war on the other two conglomerates, and Millicent’s gut told her the orb was important.
It was one of three items she had stolen from a warehouse when she, Ryker, and their little girl, Marie, were escaping Moxidone, the conglomerate they used to work for. While she could get data on some of its elements, the larger picture of the device eluded her.
The inside of the metal casing wasn’t a perfect circle, unlike the outside. It was more oblong, with a little groove at the bottom for Holy knew what. The receptors jutted into open space like needles.
She checked her computer screen, going over the readings yet again. There was a solution within this puzzle, she could feel it.
“Hey, Millicent?” Trent wandered in, his unruly hair curling around his ears and his clothes baggy on his thin frame. He ignored the organized room full of tech pieces, screens, and nearly completed weapons. Unlike the other people on Paradise, he had no interest in Millicent’s tinkering. It was refreshing to her, and one of the reasons he was allowed to enter her work space. “I’m headed to the park with a few of the resident kids. I was going to take Marie with me to help corral the younger ones.”
“Sure, sure.” Millicent waved him away distractedly.
“Working on that Toton thing, huh?” He bent toward it, squinting his brown eyes. “I haven’t seen it opened before. Does this mean you’ve figured out what it’s for?”
“I still don’t know. From what I’ve found, it almost seems like a motherboard. Considering the size, it would have to be for a supercomputer. One that might take up half a room. But . . .” She stared at the opening of the sphere. “No way this interior could be for the central processing unit. It’s way too big in comparison to the motherboard. But if it’s not a motherboard, what could it be?”
“I don’t know what any of that means, except that something is amiss.”
Millicent ignored him, now hashing out the problem verbally. “It has the receptors I might expect from a motherboard, but then it has these strange prongs, almost like they would connect to a port. I just can’t . . .” She tapped her chin in frustration. It didn’t make sense. This sort of system was unlike anything she’d seen before.
Trent’s brow scrunched as he looked at the inside of the casing. He put out his hands in a measuring kind of way. “I’m sure this has already occurred to you, but we used those types of prongs in the research lab back in Moxidone. Not that I did the actual research, you know, but I did see some of the machines they used—”
“What’s your point?”
“Oh right. Just that those types of prongs are good for reaching different areas of the brain. And the size is about right. So . . .”
“Wait.” Millicent held up her hand and stepped back, taking in the whole situation. “Different parts of the brain . . .”
“Yeah.” Trent crossed his arms over his chest. “It’s the right size for a brain, too. But Moxidone’s equipment was larger. There were computers, and screens, and—”
“Shhh.” Millicent rubbed her temples as a sickening realization overtook her. The final piece clicked into the overall puzzle. She had no idea how she hadn’t seen it sooner.
She took another step back.
“They use brain power for their central processing unit,” she said in a hush. “Human brain power.”
“What do you mean?” Trent turned toward her in confusion.
“This is a motherboard, as I’d thought, encasing a CPU. A CPU that no computer could duplicate. Computers have limits. They are only as smart as their programming. Even artificial intelligence—even the learning computers—hits a wall at some point. But this . . .” Millicent started to pace. “In comparison to a computer, a human brain has no limits. And now it has a means to reach its full potential.”
“I don’t know about that,” Trent said with a snort. “Even with Marie’s advancements, evolution is still inching forward a tiny bit at a time. It’ll be a long time before the human brain reaches its full potential.”
Millicent shook her head and bent over the sphere again. “You don’t understand, Trent. They’re not trying to further evolution with the help of machines; they’re trying to further machines with the help of biology. They are using a human brain to help computers think. This is—” Millicent braced her hands to her hips. “My first impulse is to try it out. To test this. But how could I? How could they?”
“They’re taking the brains—the consciousness—from clones?” Trent breathed, a look of horror crossing his face.
“No—” Beeping caught Millicent’s attention. Something was entering their upper atmosphere. She watched the monitor for a moment. The rocket they were expecting was on schedule.
She shifted her attention back to the matter at hand. “Not clones, unless the clones were educated for the purpose. The designer of this computer would probably look for a certain type of mind. Like you did for Marie’s experiment. Someone smart, educated, good with systems—”
“Someone like you.”
“Someone like me, yes.”
A pregnant pause stole over
their conversation. Millicent didn’t want to voice her next thought. Based on Trent’s silence, he’d shared her apprehension—and uncharacteristically swallowed his words.
Someone like her . . . and someone exactly like Marie. Not just Marie, either. In the five years Millicent and her partner, Ryker, had been on Paradise, they’d had two more children. Mason had recently turned four and little Jessa was two and a half. Like their elder sister, both children had benefited from Trent’s prenatal concoction that enhanced certain areas of the brain. Trent had devised the formula on Earth, but he’d duplicated it with resources found on their new planet. For Jessa, he had even accentuated the effect.
Any of Millicent’s children would be supercomputers all on their own. Intelligence without limits.
A shiver ran through her body.
“No,” Trent said, the boldness in his voice shocking in the silent room. He shook his head before heading for the door. “I think you’re wrong. There is no way Toton could get away with using humans as components in their machines. They’d have to have live volunteers. Why would anyone volunteer to come to consciousness in a machine?”
“Do you honestly think they’d ask for volunteers? Does Moxidone ask clones for their organs? No. If a heart is needed for an upper-level staffer, the clone is called, and they die for someone else to live. Toton didn’t ask, they took. I guarantee it. But how did they keep it quiet?”
“But the clones were—”
Millicent shut out Trent’s argument as a new idea struck her.
She turned toward the door, letting the thoughts and various memories slide through her mind, fitting together to create something new. Her feet crunched onto gravel after she let herself out of the house. The code she’d copied from Toton’s vessel all those years ago was more advanced than anything she’d ever seen—and she had been Moxidone’s preeminent coder. Then there was the metal of the sphere, a type of material not found on Earth.
It had been found on Paradise, however, which was an alien planet.
The breath rushed out of her lungs as she came out of her fog, realizing she was all alone in a beautiful green field. Trent hadn’t followed her.
That metal wasn’t from a land inhabited by humans. That code had come from a more advanced being. A being that didn’t care about harvesting human brains for its machines, just as humans didn’t care about harvesting clones—organisms deemed lesser.
“Couldn’t be,” Millicent said, looking around the world on which she stood. A world that supported life, just like Earth.
A world humans had the tech to travel to.
A more advanced being would be able to go much farther. Already, Roe’s people had improved the travel time between Earth and Paradise from two years to eighteen months. The new rocket Moxidone had built could span the distance in a year. It was only a matter of time before humans expanded outward to the next habitable planet.
“Couldn’t be,” she said again, remembering those smart doors they’d seen at Toton. Remembering the black craft moving through the travel way like a shark.
Toton’s economic position had been failing before Millicent left Earth, which was laughable given the advanced coding and tech she’d seen at their building in Los Angeles. From what she’d learned through analysis, they’d developed some truly groundbreaking weaponry and machines. It was like they were working with stronger building blocks.
She turned toward the rocket site, way in the distance. Without consciously thinking about it, she started walking toward her transportation.
Millicent jumped out of the ground vehicle. Smoke billowed from the newly landed rocket two miles in the distance, a bit off target from the preferred landing site, but good enough. She imagined the landing crews were still waking the passengers.
The small landing office was nothing more than four walls and twice as many windows. The two ground vehicles outside belonged to the men she was looking for. The larger transportation vehicle that was normally parked out front must’ve already been dispatched to pick up the newly landed passengers.
Not bothering to knock, she pushed into the building. Sunlight streamed in through the windows and splashed across two desks nestled close to the wall. Ryker glanced up, and a flash of joy raced across his face before his expression returned to a stoic sort of intensity. His black hair was piled on the top of his head in a messy bun, and lines of fatigue showed around his electric-blue eyes. Roe, the man who’d created the Rebel Nation, a group dedicated to fighting the various conglomerate powers on Earth, and who had helped Millicent and Ryker get off-planet, wore his customary expression of impatience.
“Any news?” Millicent asked, walking straight to the communication device to answer her own question. She’d been right. The passengers were being helped out of the pods that had kept them asleep and saved them from aging on the eighteen-month journey. “How’d the flight go?”
“We lost one,” Roe said as he stared out the window. “She was on the older side.”
Millicent pulled up the name, immediately recognizing it. “Shame. She was a ruthless pirate. I would’ve liked to speak to her about the new intranet I designed.”
“Her lover made it. You’ll still get that knowledge.” Roe clasped his arms behind his back. He hated losing anyone, Millicent knew, but did an excellent job of not showing it. He’d always put up a hard front. It inspired confidence in his leadership, he always said. It sounded like a personal hang-up to her.
She checked everyone’s vitals. “The children seem good. Energetic.”
“We received a report earlier.” Ryker moved closer to her. He flicked her loose, wavy blonde hair over her shoulder. “We captured another group of children recently. They weren’t guarded as well as we’d expected. It made our job easier. The reports say they are extremely intelligent, all of them.”
Millicent’s hand stilled on the console. “Where did you file the reports? I didn’t get a notice of new information . . .”
One of his hands slid down her back as he leaned over her to work the console. His warm breath fell across her neck, giving her shivers. “I didn’t get around to filing it yet, princess.” His firm touch moved over the small of her back and kept going until it came to rest on her butt. He squeezed.
“Would you”—she wiggled to dislodge his hand—“stop? I’m working.”
Roe sniffed. “How could you be working? I don’t see a dead plant in your hand.”
Ryker laughed. It was no secret she wasn’t great at growing things, but since she’d have to be elected to head up the weaponry department on Paradise, and even then, the community would get to choose what she worked on, Millicent had decided she would do something else and treat her tech and code work as a pastime. Her “hobby” was outside the jurisdiction of the people, who had no idea what she was making, let alone why it was so important. Botany was the only profession she could simply walk into without getting bossed around the entire time. She wasn’t great at it.
Ryker thought the whole thing was hilarious, and continued to call her princess because of it. Absurd really.
Lips pressed together, Millicent slapped his hand away as the report came up. “The conglomerates are basically breeding their arsenal now. Why weren’t they more heavily guarded?”
Ryker leaned a muscled shoulder against the wall, watching her. The sparkle in his eyes dulled. “Mostly, I think, because Earth is a mess of violence. Since Toton’s first attack was timed to hit during the economic summit in Los Angeles, where a great many of the conglomerates’ leaders had gathered, they successfully crippled the chain of command. The upper-level staffers who escaped are trying to hide to save themselves, so they’re not leading as they should be. Add to that the fact that people continue to disappear across the world, and there’s widespread panic and hysteria. It doesn’t take much for the downtrodden—the lower-level staffers—to riot, and mass fear has created end-of-the-world type behavior. Our people are staying calm, in their ranks. They went in with level heads an
d came back out, no problems they couldn’t easily deal with.”
“Do we have any new reports from Earth-side?” She flicked through the rest of the information. “Anything regarding Toton’s movements? Their intentions?”
“Nothing new. They continue to have a presence across the world, but their major activity seems to be in LA. We’re still guessing this has to do with all the high-level staffers hiding there. Another possibility is that their headquarters are stationed in that city, which makes sense since they launched their first large-scale attack from there, and they have yet to fully branch out. Ultimately, however, we’re still not sure. With major info drops coming in only occasionally with the rockets, and your light-speed communication device regularly malfunctioning after your network updates, we have a lot of guesswork.”
Millicent knew all of that, of course, but it was good to hear it spoken aloud from time to time. Blowing out an annoyed breath, she glanced around the hovel that was the check-in point for the landing crew and passengers, then crossed to the portable screen and accessed the catalog of communications reports. Like Ryker had said, they hadn’t received a real update in months through her shaky dish- and satellite-driven communication device, but when the news came, it was all the same—heavy artillery, massive death tolls, and desecrated sections of cities. Enormous buildings had crumpled, taking out huge sections of Los Angeles’s skyline. Moxidone had employed the most vicious weapons Millicent had created for them, and Toton’s return fire had wiped out half of the conglomerate presence in that city.
As far as anyone knew, Toton had never acknowledged the other conglomerates’ pleas to work out an economic and land-sharing compromise. Worse, no one really knew what Toton wanted. The other conglomerates didn’t know how to end the tyranny. What to offer up.
“Have any of the higher-level staffers gone missing?” Millicent asked.
Ryker was still staring at her. Reading her.
“Just come out with it,” Roe growled. “Clearly something is bothering you, so out with it. I don’t have the patience to play the question-and-answer game with you.”
“Many staffers have gone missing. All presumed dead,” Ryker answered calmly, ignoring Roe.