by C. G. Hatton
There was a lot that wasn’t in my file. The guild had made sure of that.
I pulled that bored look, staring past her to the door.
“You hacked a military base, somewhere hot… You’ve never seen snow. And whatever you did, it was so bad someone died… More than one? And the C is Cole…”
I could hear her adding it up, feel every connection she was making like punch after punch to the chest.
“You’re from Kheris,” she said suddenly. “Jesus, you’re the kid from Kheris.”
I almost shoved away from her and ran, but I knew there was nowhere to go. I looked at her instead, face and emotions fixed firmly in neutral.
“You’re the kid that caused the Kheris massacre.” She sucked in a deep breath and stood, stripping off her name badge and medic patch and dropping them in the bin with a little laugh, muttering, “Well, we can dispense with this little pantomime now. My god. The Kheris massacre.” She turned away from me, raising her voice and speaking to someone outside as she left. “Tell Sherwood to get his ass into my office now. We need to report this. Get the kid out of here and double the guard on him. Kheris? My god.”
I felt like I’d been blindsided. Sick to the stomach from the drugs, and hollow, like I was lost. One of soldiers came in, took me to the barracks, showed me to a bunk that was already made up and told me to wait. I curled up and tried to not think. I desperately hoped it wouldn’t make any difference that they knew.
The others appeared in dribs and drabs. There were other kids there too, not just the thirteen of us from Redemption. All I was bothered about was Hil. And I needed to find a way out. For both of us.
I was asleep when he turned up. I jerked awake and almost shouted out as he took hold of my shoulder. He clamped his hand over my mouth and leaned on me until I stopped shaking.
The lights were out, other kids sleeping from the sound of it.
Hilyer hissed into my ear, “Did you tell them anything?”
I shook my head, trying to shrug him off but he was too strong for me.
“What did they do to you?” he said and let up the pressure. He looked like shit, cheeks drawn and eyes dark.
I whispered back, “What did they do to you?”
“Did you tell them anything?”
“No.” Not about the guild but that cold spot turned in the pit of my stomach. “Did you?”
“No.” He sounded disgusted that I could ask it.
“Hil, we need to get out of here. It’s a suicide mission. You do know that, don’t you?”
His eyes flashed, furious. He leaned on me again and whispered, harsh, “You shouldn’t have come here and don’t get in my way.”
He shoved me and stalked off into the darkness. I slumped back onto the bunk. All the training and briefings we’d had on the Alsatia was to prepare us for Redemption. We knew nothing about this place. I didn’t even know if we were on a planet or a ship. But they’d have comms. Somewhere. And if I could get to them, I could send a message out.
The next few days were intense. We were all housed in the same barracks unit but we were drilled and tested separately. I didn’t see Hilyer much as we were put through the wringer in the gym, and drilled in weapons and hand-to-hand combat. It was relentless. I didn’t so much sleep as pass out from exhaustion whenever I was released back to the barracks room. I didn’t have a chance to think about anything but surviving it.
Then three days in, we were all lined up in a hangar and pulled out, one at a time. They didn’t tell us what they were doing, no one saying a word except to call out names. Hilyer was taken first. I was last. None of the others reappeared, so eventually I was left standing there by myself, three soldiers and our staff sergeant watching me.
I zoned out. Stood there, staring ahead, just breathing.
The footsteps approaching echoed through the vast space. I was itching to turn my head to see who it was but I was playing the game of not caring, not giving a damn and seeing if I could outsmart them, so I didn’t move. It was Sherwood who came and stood right in front of me, looking down at me.
“Anderton. So it was Kheris? I should have guessed. Ready for round two?”
“Sir, yessir,” I snapped out, so obedient it almost made me laugh.
The way he looked at me, I couldn’t tell if he was mildly impressed or more irritated than usual.
He turned away, dismissive. “Let’s see what else you have to say once we really get inside that head of yours.”
The thing with having no control over a situation is knowing when to fight and when to roll with it until you can fight and win.
He led me through dark corridors without a word, standing aside at a blast door that reminded me of the garrison on Kheris, and gestured me inside. I took one step in and froze. It was a long dark room, one side lined with lockers and cabinets, the other lined with what looked like isopods. Only these weren’t clear and white and clinical. These were dark, only the blinking lights on the consoles giving out any light in there at all.
The woman I knew as Brennan was in there, standing next to a medic who was waiting by the nearest pod that was open. The other pods were all closed.
Sherwood pushed me forward. “Let’s see how he reacts to this.”
Brennan waved me towards the pod, a slight smirk on her face and nothing like the warmth she’d shown me on Redemption. That was the only time I was close to panic. It took everything I had to close it down and switch it off, feeling that cold numbness wash over me.
I complied.
There was no panic button.
The medic told me to lie down and connected wires to my chest and neck, tubes to each arm.
I closed my eyes as the lid slid shut. Fluids pulsed into my bloodstream, sending my head swimming almost instantly, then a sharp cold stabbing pain punched into my neck, just below my right ear. The pain escalated. I think I screamed. Then I dreamed of Kheris.
It was the usual. Running through the dark corridors under the garrison, blast doors slamming shut, smoke filling the air, gunshots ricocheting in all directions around me. Except this time, I ran through it all. Ran into an empty space that was white and cold, no walls, no floor. I skidded to a halt. I wasn’t even really there anymore. I blinked. Lines of code appeared all around me, logic strings spinning and dancing in lazy spirals. I was right in the middle of it. Nothing like manipulating the logic puzzles on a board. I was in amongst it.
I couldn’t resist nudging the strings to see how far I could get. I could see the traps and tripwires the way NG had described them, as if they were real, physical entities blocking the way, hiding just out of reach, beyond sight, unless you knew what you were looking for. He’d laughed and told me I’d get it once I’d seen it through a Senson.
An implant.
The light vanished as if a switch had been flicked.
I tried to reach my hand up to my neck, but it wasn’t just wires that tugged, my wrists were restrained. I was trapped in an isopod. The reality of it hit home with an icy knot that turned in my stomach.
But then I realised, in there, I could go wherever I wanted.
“Not everywhere, you can’t.”
The words were spoken softly but echoed inside my head.
I spun around in the absolute darkness.
“A newbie… and one who can see through my traps. How intriguing.”
I felt its scrutiny boring into me as if a million eyes were staring right at me. The intensity of that attention increased until I couldn’t breathe.
It was the AI.
“Luka Cole Anderton,” it said slowly. “You are quite an anomaly. However did you learn to do this?”
Chapter 25
I didn’t know what it was doing. No AI I’d ever messed with had ever done anything like this. I’d always avoided them, tricked them into ignoring me.
It felt like it was squeezing my brain.
I didn’t know if it could read my thoughts. NG had told me they couldn’t, the link didn’t work that w
ay, but now I was in the middle of it I wasn’t so sure. I tried desperately to not think. Emptied my head. Ran calcs and equations as I was held there in the dark.
“Welcome to Spearhead,” it whispered and it let me go.
I crashed back into the pod, waking with a jerk as if I’d fallen from a height.
My heart was thumping way too fast.
This was the AI Markus had been talking about.
There was an oxygen mask on my face. I sucked in a breath like I’d been drowning, suffocating, no idea if what I’d felt was real or not. The side of my neck was sore, cold. I could hear distant voices but I couldn’t make out what they were saying and I wasn’t sure if I was imagining it. My wrists were secured at my sides, ankles restrained as if they didn’t want me kicking at anything. There was no point. They had me. Well and truly had me. But they wanted me alive so I just lay there and breathed, an edge to the oxygen that tasted like it had something else in it too. I didn’t know if it was what they were dripping into me through the IV lines or the possibility of a neural interface implanted in my neck, but my head was swimming, hammers pounding behind my eyes. I gave in to it and drifted off to sleep.
The pod was open when I woke up, voices floating in out of the darkness. I listened as I lay there, keeping my eyes closed.
“No.” That sounded like Brennan.
The next voice was a guy but I didn’t recognise him.
“He’s resisting? How the hell is a fourteen year old kid resisting? And he went straight for the AI, the instant the Senson was activated? I don’t care how you do it, but get him into line. Or he’s terminated.”
“What about Hilyer?”
“Keep at it. Increase the dosage. He’s the one we’re going to use as the primary. But make damn sure he’s solid. We have no room for failure here. A fourteen year old resisting? How is that even possible?”
There was a click and the restraints opened. I still didn’t move.
“You have five days,” he said.
A single set of footsteps echoed away.
“You can open your eyes now,” Brennan said. “That was not smart, Luka.”
I looked up at her, blinking. I had no idea how long I’d been out. The wires and tubes were all gone. I had a horrible feeling I’d just messed up.
They brought the lights up gradually and instructed us to get out of the pods. Everyone was let out at the same time, a line of us, all standing there, blinking. They marched us back to our barracks room and told us we had four hours to get cleaned up and get some sleep before we’d be called again.
It was weird, and at first I just thought it must have been because everyone was disorientated, but they were all quiet. Like silent. Not withdrawn or anything. Just silent. Efficient. Doing what we were told with no deviation, no conversation, no one asking, “What the hell had that all been about?” And no one interacted with anyone else. Even Hilyer and Jem. They didn’t so much as look at me, didn’t talk to each other. Nothing. Like we were all little robots all of a sudden.
Until we were in the shower under a torrent of water. And Hilyer was next to me. And he whispered, “Are you okay?”
“I don’t know,” I whispered back. “Are you?”
He gave a little laugh. “I thought they’d got to you.”
“I thought they’d got to you. What about Jem?”
“I don’t know. She’s being weird.” He glanced around, scrubbing his hands over his head. “Can they hear us now?”
I reached to touch the sore spot on my neck. “I don’t know. Can they hear what we’re thinking?”
He looked at me. “If they can, then we’re really in the shit.”
After that, I lost track of time. They didn’t keep to day and night, we were all up at different times, doing different things. We slept when they said we could, we ate when they let us and they put us in those pods so often, I didn’t even have a vague idea of how long we’d been there. It could have been days, it could have been weeks.
I don’t know if it was the drugs or the conditioning or just where we were, but we all fell into a state of compliant acceptance. It was so relentless, I wanted to do what they wanted me to do just to get it done so I could sleep. They were feeding us well. We were comfortable and there was something intoxicating in the way we were being trained. I’d get in the pod and wake up just knowing stuff but there was no sense that I’d ever not known it, it was just there, in my brain. I had a splitting headache the whole time but in a way, it was cool not to have time to think. The nightmares stopped. The flashbacks stopped. In some ways, it was possibly the easiest time I’ve ever had in my whole life.
Then I was sucker-punched back to reality.
We were in the main hangar, running through a Shaolin sequence, all of us, in rows, perfectly synchronised, unbelievable concentration, no other sound in there, spinning, kicking, jumping. The instructor clapped his hands and we split off into pairs to spar, every move slick and perfect, in just days of training. We didn’t even think about it. It was only later that we were told how dangerous the direct neuro-programming was. It was illegal. Banned outright, everywhere. And had been for years, apparently. Earth had used it on soldiers to accelerate combat training, but when they started going crazy in public, the whole thing boiled over. Six soldiers on R&R on Earth had gone completely off the rails. Three hours and a hundred and seventeen dead civilians later, including a minor member of the royal family, and there was a public outcry. Even the normally secretive Imperial military couldn’t cover that one up.
There, at that base, wherever the hell it was in the galaxy, we didn’t question it. We couldn’t question it. We just ran on the pure adrenaline of pushing ourselves to the absolute limit. Some of the kids that went into the pods didn’t wake up with the rest of us. When that happened, we never saw them again and another kid would turn up to replace them. Like that was normal.
It was Hilyer I was paired with. We faced each other, bowed and ran through the drill, defying gravity, defying the senses, the absolute embodiment of Charlie’s slow and steady but with mind-dazzling speed and accuracy. I can’t deny that it felt incredible.
Then we turned, I stepped back and in my field of vision I saw the far hangar door open, saw who walked in and I froze. All the artificial conditioning I’d had programmed into me in those few intense days evaporated in a snap. Hilyer’s spinning kick, that I should have avoided easily even if by mere millimetres, slammed into my head and I went sprawling. I fell, the stuffing knocked out of me and the adrenaline rush turning into a sickening dread as reality crashed back in from all directions.
Arianne and Kat were walking along the edge of the hangar, both in uniform, talking in low voices. That was bad enough. But it wasn’t seeing them there that freaked me out. It was the guy they were walking with. The IDC black ops guy who had ordered my execution on Kheris.
It was him. No doubt. He was wearing black fatigues, not powered armour like the last time I’d seen him, but it was definitely him. I couldn’t help staring, sure he was going to turn any minute and recognise me as I’d recognised him.
I knelt there, rooted to the spot. Hilyer leaned down and grabbed my shoulder, reaching out his hand. I couldn’t help flashing back to that moment, kneeling in the bright sunlight, in the dust with a gun at the back of my head, shouts and this IDC asshole saying, cold and vicious, “Kill him.”
I staggered to my feet, heart pounding beyond control, sure they’d be monitoring me and sure that he’d take one look at me, pull out his gun and shoot me right there and then.
“Fight me,” Hilyer hissed. “Whatever the hell is going on, fight me.”
I balanced my weight and brought my hands up into position, numb, cold, surreal flashes of Kheris, the Alsatia, Redemption all merging into one.
Hilyer started to circle, slowly, trying to coax me back into it but I couldn’t move, I just couldn’t respond.
He cursed, “Screw this,” and kicked me in the knee. Right in the knee that had b
een messed up.
I hit the floor. I’d forgotten how much it could hurt, biting back a cry and swearing as I curled up, trying to ease the stabbing pain.
He knelt beside me, shielding me from their line of sight, and yelling to the instructor that I needed a medic.
“Sorry, I slipped,” he said as the guy ran up.
He wasn’t impressed and snapped at us to get to the side and wait for a medic, barking out commands to the others to line up and move out.
Arianne, Kat and the IDC guy had gone, walked through with only a cursory glance at the bunch of kids they’d nabbed from the prison system, the kids they were happily turning into little assassins.
Hilyer helped me to the edge of the hangar and set me down. I stretched out my leg.
He crouched beside me, and said quietly, intently, “Whatever the hell you have going on, LC, drop it. Or it’ll get you killed.”
Chapter 26
Eventually a medic turned up. He wrapped my knee tight in a support, injected something directly into the joint and told me to follow, dismissing Hilyer with instructions to report to the gym. Hil looked at me before he left like he didn’t trust that I wasn’t going to screw up again. If he’d outright asked, I don’t think I could have promised.
I limped after the guy to the pod room. There was no one else there. He ordered me to strip off and climb into it, hooked me up and strapped my knee in a contraption similar to the one they’d used on me on board the Alsatia and closed the lid. No explanation. No reassurance. I lay there and waited for the drugs to kick in.
It was the AI that approached me that time. The implant engaged, that weird sensation of awareness that kicked in when someone, or something, was connected to you. We learned later how to use queries and permissions, priorities and tags. Civilised stuff. At that base, they just connected to us when they wanted. Invasive. Demanding. All part of the process. We didn’t realise at the time how bad it was.