Subversive Elements (Unreal Universe Book 2)
Page 79
When Trinity rose again, it would be to a Universe ruled by her, dominated by Dark Age-immune technology.
Alyssa permitted herself a real and true smile. Only one other person in the entire system knew the depth of her commitment to the Latelian people, and he was hers.
When the Dark fell, the Latelians would rise.
Musing done, Alyssa booted the hoary old First Main up and waited for the antiquated cursor to appear. She’d deliberated long and hard on this, and while there was no feasible way for her to erase The Museum Incident, she could rid herself of something that’d been bothering her for some time now.
She typed, savoring this moment. ‘Del: Garth Nickels’.
Undefined parameter
Alyssa frowned, realizing with a shaky grin that she’d used the bastardized form of the man’s last name. Correcting herself, she entered ‘Del: Garth N’Chalez’.
Superuser access required to delete superuser Code not recognized Login under superuser code superuser code required
Chairwoman Alyssa Doans stared at the First Main with something akin to paralyzed horror on her face. She’d never encountered that string of errors before, nor could she remember anyone recording them in the Chair Logs. As far as she and every Chair had known since time immemorial, the unique string of access codes put you at the very top of the heap.
Alyssa tried again. The same reply appeared. She tried again, and again, and again. Each time the error flashed, her rage darkened until she was barely coherent.
Who was Garth Nickels?
Superuser access required to delete superuser Code not recognized Login under superuser code superuser code required
Morgan the Dead’s Revenge
Garth Nickels was tired too.
His building was gone, a smoking, charred wreck of rubble, burned-out mains and twisted machinery. Nevertheless, he wasn’t pleased. Not by a longshot.
It was the fact that he’d needed to resort to such destruction in the first place that rankled sorely with Garth Nickels.
The initial plan had been simple; cut his hand open, pour a pint of his blood onto the altered PCU and run like the Dickens out the front door before the thing went super-critical, preferably bellowing something about booby traps or some such horseshittery on the off chance someone was watching.
Only he hadn’t been able to walk in through the front doors thanks to the presence of a truly awe-inspiring collection of scanners and security devices that’d transformed UltraMegaDynamaTron’s home base into the most secure fortress on the planet.
After discovering the Protean Technician’s Union great honking huge security net around Guillfoyle Plaza, he’d been forced to use Turuin’s Gauntlet to sneak into his own building. Beyond adding an hour to his task, it’d been as easy to get in this time as it had been last time around, which was about the only thing that’d gone smoothly during his midnight sortie to keep his ass out of The Peak.
And then, of course, there was this new fucking problem with his blood.
It didn’t make things that used nanotech explode anymore. And that spoke to the many other problems he seemed to be having, problems he’d been ignoring since waking up in The Museum…
Leaning against the door to the Ultra Suite, Garth remembered the shock of dismay as he’d stared, uncomprehendingly at first, at the modified PCU and its stubborn non-blowing-up-edness. He remembered adding more blood to the mix, reasoning out that his earlier bout of supercharging Odin to make a solid hologram had somehow weakened the boom. He remembered seeing nothing happening and concluding that he could pour more of his blood onto the fucking thing and then die with it still not blowing up or he could manufacture some other way to get rid of the evidence of his stupidity.
Garth was proud of his second choice. Tacticians in SpecSer would be applauding him and right now he’d be getting another non-medal from Old Man Politoyov for being Super Tricky; he’d used the still resident black-ops avatars given to him by ex-OverSec Terrance to override every single safety protocol in the building’s power supplies and machinery. In short, everything that’d been plugged in and ready to go –except the PCU, which he’d deactivated as thoroughly as hell- had gone. Up. And UP! AND UP!
He was proud, but irritated; whatever was wrong with him was fucking serious and he was too goddamn tired to figure out what it was. He was hurt in ways he couldn’t readily define and while he suspected the ex-dee explosion was at the core of his lethargy, there was no way to prove it.
He was tired. He wanted to crawl into bed and sleep next to Naoko. About the only thing he hoped for was that if he was really lucky he’d see some side-boob. It was a small thing to ask for, especially after the insanely … insane day they’d both gone through.
Garth shoved the door open, sighing resolutely, wishing all the while that he had the energy to pretend he was going to look for answers to his condition. He was definitely going to need a shower before he climbed into bed. He reeked like blowed up building and his effing hand was still bleeding like a motherfucker.
Dimly, he realized he was going to have to get that looked at. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d really needed medical attention.
He stood there, in the darkness, breathing heavily, gazing stupidly at his bleeding hand.
Naoko screamed. He looked up. Someone drove a rifle butt expertly into the middle of his forehead, knocking him out.
And that was that.
Signal, Detected
Unfettered by matter or even the rules of a physical dimension, the mushroom cloud explosion of extra-dimensional energy burned through Latelyspace faster than the speed of light. In little to no time, it passed close to the edges of Chairwoman Doans’ sphere of command, where it tripped a sensor.
Aboard a ship that looked like no ship built by Latelians, an alarm sounded.
Slate-colored eyes the size of windows opened and watched data fill screens as big as those in the now-destroyed Museum’s Viewing Room.
The message was irrefutable. The first signal had been sent. The first stage of the … the first stage had been reached. Two more remained.
“Will this signal pass The Cordon?” The voice, unused to speech after so long asleep, was rough, gravely.
The screens shivered as machines processed the request. The answer came back positive. In less time than was comfortable, the ex-dee burst would pass beyond The Cordon to the entity that waited.
“Garth N’Chalez needs to be attended to.”
The ship started its engines.
TO BE CONTINUED IN …
THE LATELIAN CYCLE VOLUME #3
Citizen Pariah