Vendetta Protocol

by Kevin Ikenberry

> The voice laughed. Laughed. Maybe it wasn’t a protocol at all.

  <>

  The exotransit touched down on the harbor near Ellis Island. The empty pedestal where the Statue of Liberty once stood caught her eye, but she said nothing. A slow smile creased her face.

  I knew they wanted me to go to war the minute I woke up in Sydney. I knew they wanted me to kill again.

  <>

  I knew I was me. The moment they started talking to me, I knew they wanted me to fight again, okay? I knew it, and I don’t want any part of it. Never again.

  Amy closed her eyes and remembered watching a wingman, not thirty feet off her left wing, take an air defense artillery shell in the F-15E Strike Eagle’s wide rectangular scoop. One minute he’d been there, and the next minute the sky had been filled with fragments of plane and men. She shook the thought away, but saw the helicopter crash site she’d circled for an hour before the ground forces collected their shit into one sock, enough to mount a rescue. Bodies lay strewn across the top of the mountain while she tried to focus and walk cannon rounds into advancing Taliban soldiers.

  Please, make it stop.

  <>

  I didn’t want to kill anyone.

  <>

  I just wanted to fly.

  <>

  She sat back and stared out the window at the unfamiliar skyline. I signed on the dotted line. I knew what I was getting into.

  <>

  But how will we get past the agents?

  <>

  Okay. Amy pulled in a deep breath and saw the terminal looming in the distance. Two vehicles with flashing blue and red lights waited on the tarmac. For a split second, she imagined herself being led away in handcuffs, sitting in jail, and facing her own execution. The vision changed to the Himalayas, where she’d walked free and anonymously for months. She could have that again. That she’d wanted death only hours before did not matter. There was a chance at freedom all over again. She would not have to kill again. Amy closed her eyes and leaned against the seat as the public-address system clicked to life.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to New York City, Columbia, where the local time is nineteen hundred twenty-four. We will be arriving at gate thirty-four, and your baggage will be available in quantum receptacles in the main terminal on concourse alpha. We apologize for the routine customs-and-immigration scan upon arrival. Please remain in your seats until properly scanned. Thank you for flying Nippon Transit. Have a pleasant evening.”

  Are you certain about this?

  <>

  That can’t possibly last once they question the other girl.

  <>

  Amy nodded. I think I understand now. Just survive the next two minutes. Don’t make me black out again.

  <>

  During her wandering, Amy had cataloged more than two thousand songs and varying categories of music. When the song came up in her ears, she did not recognize it, but she liked it. The beat was incessant and the guitars screaming. The female vocalist screeching lyrics about being something more, something different from what she was, resonated with Amy. Eyes closed and feet tapping along to the beat, Amy was startled by a tap on her shoulder.

  She saw three armored men surrounding her. Two of them held plasma rifles at the ready. One held something like a handheld television monitor with a pistol grip. The aperture of the monitor pointed at her face. “Sorry, miss. Please hold still for scanning.”

  Three seconds later, there was an audible beep. The agents were already moving across the aisle. One of them said over his shoulder, “Have a nice evening.”

  Amy picked up her backpack and made her way casually up the aisle, accelerating as she reached the hatch.

  <>

  She nodded to the flight attendants and the mustachioed flight officer as she stepped onto the jet bridge and walked toward freedom. Around a tight corner, she nearly collided with a man in a black suit much like what the agents in Japan had worn. He looked at her for a moment and then cocked his ear to the plane and moved quickly by her. Amy hurried into the airport. The bright, open spaces of the Chitose terminal seemed light years away from the dim, filthy carpets of the cramped gate area. The smells of body odor, baby shit, and alcohol permeated the air. No one saw her as she hefted the strap to the top of her shoulder and accelerated into a slow jog.

  <>

  Amy turned into the secluded hallway and saw the door clearly marked with a sign for emergency stairs with a red-and-white warning placard that read, “Alarm will sound.”

  That door?

  <>

  As Amy hit the door, she cringed, expecting the alarm to sound. There was nothing, and as fast as she pushed through the door to the empty stairwell, relief blossomed. She took a deep breath.

  <>

  How far down? Amy practically leapt down the first flight of stairs and picked up speed. A far-off siren caught her ear, but she pushed down flight after flight.

  <>

  Amy reached the ground floor, saw the door, and pushed through it to see the automated tram moving swiftly away from her. Sprinting hard, she reached the tram and vaulted onto the flat bed with ease. I do like this new body, she thought with a wry grin. Whether the cause was adrenaline or the hope of freedom, she hadn’t felt that good in months.

  Now what? She looked wildly around. The maintenance tunnel was empty except for her tram, and with no driver or external cameras, she felt blind. Are they following me?

  <>

  Amy tried to count to t
hirty, but her thoughts were scattered and disjointed. Hours before, she’d been ready to take her own life and then received a new protocol that somehow had used her to brutally kill two agents, and now she was on the run from authorities bent on killing her. It made no sense, but she could taste freedom, and that would be enough.

  <>

  Feet on the ground, Amy turned and ran into the dimly lit corridor. Her vision shifted to near infrared, which made her path clear as daylight. The extent of her physical activity to that point had been a slow climb up Everest and a two-hundred-kilometer trek along the remains of the Great Wall. There’d been no real need for exertion. As with all of her military-service memories, she’d pushed aside recollections of running multiple races and thousands of lonely kilometers.

  The sprint opened long-dormant receptors and muscles. Her perfected body responded with long, fluid strides and controlled breathing to maximize the effort. In three minutes, she ran more than two kilometers, faster than any human being of her era could have gone. A two-meter-tall fence lay ahead, and she vaulted it like a hurdler and skidded to a stop along slick, wet grass filled with trash and the detritus of society. She glanced back at the fence and laughed. Since leaving Sydney, she’d never pushed her body to its limits before. What it could do without real effort astounded her.

  In the distance, several figures huddled against the cold rain and walked toward the inner city. An autobus turned onto the roadway, and Amy flagged it down. As it slowed and stopped, Amy gazed up into the cloud-filled sky and the driving rain. The cold water pelted her skin, and every drop washed away more of who she thought she was and replaced it with something new and different, something she could believe in.

  The doors opened, and she stepped into the partially full bus and found an empty seat in the middle third. No one looked at her. Most of the scruffy-looking passengers either stared straight ahead or rode in silence with their eyes closed. A few moved their heads to beats that only they could hear. Against the fogged window, she watched the skyline of the inner city growing closer with every second.

  How long do I stay on the bus?

  There was no answer, though the quiet feel of her mind was not there. The protocol was working and listening. It would be there when she needed it. For the moment, that was enough.

  Active listening disengaged, Mally monitored the girl’s thoughts and studied the data from their successful escape. Searches were active across the city, but facial recognition remained disabled, which was good. It was only a matter of time before the girl was a known commodity. Leaving New York would be difficult but possible. In her list of priorities, leaving New York was at least number twelve. Finding an alcove, a safe haven, was the first priority, but it would have to include privacy and an untraceable portal to the global network. A search for the semipublic place where the girl could disappear was critical.

  The search lasted 4.3 seconds and generated over a thousand quality hits, but one stood out more than the others. A small percentage of Columbia’s residents with prestige—especially in New York and other remaining large cities—gathered together behind protected walls with high-bandwidth terminals and processors. All she had to do was get the girl there.

  The autobus neared a large commercial center, and Mally formulated a plan. <>

  The shopping center? The girl’s thoughts appeared simply as words in the depth of Mally’s brain. If she’d wanted, they could be made into a synthetic voice, but Mally decided against it.

  Mally scanned the unfamiliar term and determined it was correct by twenty-first-century standards. Narrowing the search, Mally found what she wanted. She connected then made an immediate appointment. There wouldn’t be a lot of time for the processes to heal, but the girl would be almost unrecognizable by the time the procedures took hold. A few slight cosmetic changes to her face and body would give them just enough time to gain entry into the protected sectors.

  <>

  What are we doing?

  <>

  Amy shivered. I understand. What do you want me to do?

  <>

  There must be something.

  Data from the girl’s batch file was disjointed and confusing. Her mind would not accept the fact that she’d been a trained pilot and killer. She wanted a peaceful existence because she’d made a horrible mistake. If the girl could not make peace with her past, maybe Mally could force a new future upon her. Or she could simply take control.

  <>

  Amy’s breathing and heart rate both slowed significantly. Acquiescence was a beautiful thing, Mally decided. As the girl rode the last few blocks in silence, Mally computed over a thousand courses of action. After a moment of consideration, she realized that she’d grouped them as Kieran would have wanted them.

  Kieran. They’d only shared a few months together before the Terran Defense Force overplayed its hand. Delivering Berkeley Bennett onto Sunset Beach one dreary afternoon had been a perfect play. Alone and depressed, Kieran fell right into their hands. Bennett invited him to the badlands that had been North America, where she could manipulate him into loving her. The emotional connection accelerated Kieran’s integration to the point that when he chose to continue to Tennessee, there was little Mally could do to stop him. Instead, she figured out how to leave him. Mally had made her move, killing Kieran in the process, just before Bennett attempted to stop her upload.

  They’d sacrificed their greatest achievement, and she did not know why. The urge to expose herself and plow headlong into the cavernous servers and data warehouses of the Terran Defense Force and the Terran Council was a temptation she’d resisted until the girl’s protocol made an emergency call. Mally’s ideas of subtle revenge had become something else entirely. She focused on the girl’s protocol, and from there, her plan had been simple: get inside, if possible, then move on. Patience she understood, but the application thereof was difficult when time passed in nanoseconds. Still, she planned and schemed. The time would come to make the leap, and she had to be ready for it.

  Amy continued to ride along in silence. She stared at a toddler standing in the seat to her front. The child’s face was lit with a smile, and Mally watched for a moment as well.

  During her time with Kieran, she’d calculated a moderate chance that she could fully download into his brain to form a new personality. Time had given her a better opportunity to research and design a potential takeover. Eighty percent was a calculated risk, but if she could convince the girl to give herself over, the probability increased. Removal of free will, total acquiescence, would push the calculations to over 90 percent. If that happened, all Mally had to do was access enough bandwidth to make the transition possible.

  The courses of action were simple. The least likely was that the girl would decide to integrate and leave Mally unable to maintain a connection. The most dangerous was that the girl would take her own life before Mally was capable of a complete download and takeover. Both were unlikely now, and if Amy succeeded in taking her life during Mally’s attempt to take over, there would be no escape. The proper time was coming. Mally watched the percentages change positively for the possibility of transcendence and complete personality takeover.

  The autobus slowed, and the girl stood and nimbly moved down the aisle to the doors. She looked up into the glass-and-steel structure and said something, but Mally did not care. Accessing the embedded networ
k within the shopping center took microseconds. Mally cleared enough bandwidth to again take the girl over for a few moments. Until Mally was ready for the permanent transition, there would be no ill effects for the girl.

  The girl would eventually thank her for it, or maybe she wouldn’t. All Mally had to do was get her to give up without a fight.

  Inside the mall, the girl spoke to her again. Suite 350?

  <>

  Amy licked her lips, and Mally reviewed her data and recognized the response as anxiety. My protocol… The girl paused. He couldn’t do any of this. How are you doing this?

  <>

  What do I call you?

  <>

  And you were designed for me?

  Mally laughed, letting the girl hear her reaction. <>

  Mally pulled back in preparation for her jump forward. The girl glanced around the opulent center in a mixture of amazement and curiosity. All cameras remained passive, and Mally made sure to sporadically interfere with any that crossed the girl’s face. Tiny glitches, like blinking eyelids, would not cause any alarm to a concerned party.

  At the door to Suite 350, the girl paused. Are you ready, Mally?

  <> Then she came forward for a second time.

  The Pacific Representative stood in front of Neige’s desk in her expensive designer suit, wringing her hands. Neige didn’t know the young woman’s name, nor did she care. “The responding agent let the first girl go, Madame Chairman. He’s been arrested and is under questioning, but we think he simply failed to evaluate the situation and believed the second woman to be the killer. New York reports the subject has gone dark. They’ve asked permission to enable facial recognition on a noncitizen. The request must be approved by you and forwarded to the prelate for consideration.”