by Hugo Huesca
Was it my imagination or had the sea stirred? No. Definitely my imagination. The dead do not turn in their graves when people speak ill of them.
“There’s the Rune Event that’s needed to activate the Signal,” David mused. “But it’s inherently flawed. Whoever created it thought any civilization smart enough to activate the Signal would be smart enough to set up basic safety measures.”
“That’s not fair,” I told him. “No one knew what could happen. No one explained anything. We were stumbling blind.”
David shrugged. “No, yeah, I agree. It sucks. But it happened.”
He sighed.
“I assume the first time a Keles-like disaster took place it surprised a lot of people. Perhaps a couple of galaxies had regressed back to the Industrial Revolution. Perhaps the effect was more widespread. It doesn’t matter. These…minds are dead. Entropy got even them in the end. Keles won’t be any different, he won’t endure data corruption forever. But in the time he has left…if he spreads out…he could cripple entire civilizations.”
And create a lot of ill-will for humanity out there. Keles would be the equivalent of a virus with the hacker’s home address attached to it and a note with his name and bank account numbers.
I winced. “We have to stop Keles, no matter the cost. Are you sure shutting down the Core can kill him?”
“He’s like me. Software outside of the system. If we catch him before he consumes the Core, shutting it down it will delete him. Whatever’s left will end up here.”
I realized I was scratching my chin in much the same way Rylena did. “And could he come back from here? No offense, David, but that asshole has come back from the dead before.”
“There’s technically the chance…” David smiled in a way that was meant to be reassuring. “The chances are astronomically low. This place is filled with random bits of data. For them to rearrange themselves in the correct order, purely by chance… hell, I’d be more concerned about the heat death of the Universe. And hey, even if he did, we would be lucky it’s Keles who comes back and not any of the dead minds at the bottom of the Stack.”
“That is one terrifying way of reassuring me,” I said.
I made my decision. To let Keles prowl the Universe would destroy Kipp’s dream much more than shutting our Core down. At least this way we still had hope.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said.
“Finally! To be honest, this place was starting to freak me out. I swear something just moved down there. Ah, I’m just fucking with you. C’mon, bud. Let’s go for one last flight.”
22 CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
LEGACIES
IT TOOK me a long while to realize that even though I could not see anything, I wasn’t dead.
“What the fuck?” some guy asked.
I shook my head around, trying to make sense of my surroundings, but the VR-Brain’s visor made it impossible to see jackshit.
Confusion spread through Dervaux's ranks like wildfire.
“What’s going on?”
“I think we lost power.”
And Dervaux's voice rising over the confusion, “Shut up! Right now. Listen…”
No one dared contradict her. What followed was the sound of a room full of people trying to make sense of a distant noise while being thwarted by their own breathing.
“I can’t hear shit,” I said aloud. “Perhaps if someone takes out this mindjack copy off my head?”
“Shut up,” Dervaux hissed. “Or else.”
A part of me wanted to push her to her limits. Show her what little I cared about her threats. After all, I had nothing left to lose.
On the other hand, I was as curious as she was.
Perhaps even hopeful.
So I listened. And she was right. Something was happening. It was distant and faint, like the caress from a ghost. A dull, constant, thud, thud, thud.
The guard who had put the VR-Brain on me tensed so much even I realized it. He said, “That’s gunfire, Madam.”
The police, I thought with a streak of pure joy. They’re here!
That was the happiest I had ever been about the police arriving. I could almost imagine James Harrison riding a white horse as he drove through the forces of Odin to my rescue.
So that’s how princesses feel at the end of the level.
The thud, thud, thud, was louder now. The police were coming closer. They must’ve brought an entire battalion with them. Perhaps SWAT drones. Maybe some helicopters.
I hoped it was the SWAT drones. I really wanted to see Dervaux's wolves smashed under the police tanks.
Like they realized what I was thinking, the wolves growled softly. It sounded like someone breathing over a synthesizer.
“It’s getting closer,” another guard said. “Do you want us to go outside, Madam?”
“Don’t be stupid,” she said. “Let the mercs handle it. If they get past them, you’ll get to take your shot here.”
Now the noise was clearly gunfire. From a lot of sources. It was apparent now even through the insulated walls. There was also the dry trembling of explosives going off. The operating table shook so hard it almost fell onto its side. The guard caught it at the last second.
Too bad, I could’ve escaped if it fell, I thought. That, or I’d have broken my nose.
We waited in silence. I realized I was holding my breath.
Kick their fucking ass, Harrison.
Slowly, the firefight reached a crescendo, with multiple automatic weapons going off at once. Multiple tremors shook the building, causing dust to fall from the ceiling and into my eyes and mouth.
Here and there, the weapons of the symphony went silent. One by one. The firefight was coming to an end.
“We have two dozen men out there,” one of the guards whispered. “It would take an army to get past them.”
“Or one single, determined man,” Dervaux whispered back. Her voice had lost the authority and the gravitas that she held before. She sounded old, now. Just old.
“That’s impossible,” the guard said. Apparently, he was so stunned he hadn’t realized he had just contradicted his employer.
“When you’ve lived as long as I have, you get the chance to see what true determination looks like,” Dervaux said. “It’s not a pretty sight. Don’t worry. It’ll be over soon. One way or another.”
The firefight stopped.
We all held our breath.
No one moved. Not the two pairs of red eyes from Dervaux's drones, not myself—there wasn’t even wind smacking against the windows.
Almost timidly, the door opened with a squeak.
At the same time, the five guards unloaded their guns towards the darkness.
In the cramped meeting room, the noise of their shots was so deafening I shook against my restraints like I was the one getting shot.
Harrison!
Whoever was outside would need a miracle to keep enough of their head intact to be revived by the doctors.
The guards shot and shot and shot. They reloaded and kept shooting for good measure.
I started shaking the medical table rhythmically side to side, trying to make it fall over. I wasn’t trying to escape; I was only acting on the instinct that the floor was the second safest place for me to be right now. The first one was, of course, under my bed, far away from this fucking place.
The table toppled over and I fell with it, hitting my temple hard enough to draw blood. I screamed something that was drowned out in the shootout and tried with all my might not to lose consciousness. At least the VR-Brain had fallen away from my head. I could see just a bit better, thanks to the meager moonlight that punched through the polluted clouds.
I had fallen with my body in the direction of the corridor. I could see sparks from the bullets as they hit the reinforced door and walls and ricocheted in every direction. One bullet struck the floor just a hand’s-lenght away from my eyes. A lady from the scientist team fell to the floor, immobile, with her white coat soaked in blood.<
br />
Fuck!
My right wrist’s restraints had broken away from the table with the impact and I was now wearing them as a wristband. My arm was limp. For a second, I thought something had paralyzed me. With an effort of will, I pushed back the adrenaline and the panic and closed my fingers. Then I slowly, and very discreetly, went to work on the straps of my left wrist.
Before I could get free, the guards ran out of ammo.
Dervaux was screaming something at them. Of course, the only thing I could hear was a dull ringing in my ears.
Which hurt like fuck, by the way—my eardrums were probably ruptured. But I was so pumped with adrenaline I may not have noticed if a raccoon chose that moment to carve a hole in my abdomen and build a house there for his five children. I freed my left wrist while my nails left red streaks on my skin that I didn’t feel.
My upper body slumped on the floor, finally freed.
At that instant, power flowed back to the building without warning. The lights and the holograms turned on at the same time and with such intensity that I had to close my eyes to avoid being completely blinded.
When I opened them again, three guards were dead, slumped on the floor, blood pouring from terrible head wounds. Dervaux was cowering in a fetal position behind her two drones, who towered above her with their snouts pointed at the door like arrows. They made no move away from their liege.
A black figure came out from Seitaro Ogawa’s office.
At first, I thought it was one of Rune’s battle androids. He was covered head-to-toe in ballistic plate armor and military black coveralls. He stumbled down the corridor in our direction carrying a gigantic rifle in his hands, with munitions strapped to his chest, along with enough grenades and explosives to level what was left of the office.
Partially covered by this man, I could see several bodies sprawled behind him in different conditions ranging from tender, to well-done, to carbonized.
He wasn’t unharmed. His armor was cracked all over his body, mostly in the chest plate. Blood was coming from some of the cracks, small rivulets that soaked the coveralls.
He dragged his boots like walking was taking too much out of him. One of his legs was stiff, and he had to move with a shoulder resting against the wall to get enough leverage to keep his rifle aimed in front of him. His helmet had a night-vision visor that was not needed anymore, so he reached up with one hand and tore it away.
“Derry?” I said mutely.
My brain was too overwhelmed to be surprised anymore. Instead, I went to work on my leg restraints while twisting my neck to keep an eye on the fight. I barely caught enough glimpses and flashes to realize what was going on.
The surviving two guards rushed the door and started firing. They hit Derry squarely in the chest. Slivers of plate flew in all directions.
Derry stumbled back, leaving a trail of blood on the wall. His face was pale and calm. He was blind in one eye and his hair was white and brittle. With an elegant gesture, he shot twice.
The shots hit their targets’ heads half-a-second apart. Brain matter and fragments of bone flew everywhere.
My head started spinning. One leg was free. A couple more seconds and I would be able to join the party, for whatever good was worth.
There wasn’t a single unharmed scientist left: all the surviving ones were hit either by ricochets or fragments of walls or ceiling from the bullet impacts. A woman with her forehead covered in blood pointed at me and screamed, but she made no move toward me.
Everyone else was staring at the door. John Derry stepped inside, his rifle trained at the corners.
He nodded in my direction. He said something, perhaps a one-liner, that I couldn’t hear.
He looked at Dervaux, who was still behind her mongrels. She was also telling him something. Her lips were twisted with hate.
Derry’s eyes flickered to the wolves as their servos started pumping, gathering strength to jump. His jaw clenched and he yelled a curse as he raised his rifle again.
He wasn’t expecting there to be any drones left, I thought with dismay. He had hacked the skyscraper the same way I had done years ago.
But Dervaux had said those wolves were the first models. Not connected to any security network. Only loyal to her. I finished my work on the last remaining restraint, powering through it with inhuman speed thanks to an overdose of adrenaline. I was free, and on my knees, and totally unable to do anything about what happened next.
It happened so fast.
Age and wear had made the drones only a shadow of what they used to be. Perhaps only a fraction as fast as the new models.
This was good because Derry was only a shadow of the man he used to be. Besides, he was hurt and bleeding to death.
The wolves rushed at him in a blur. They were eager to finish the job.
He still managed to beat them to the punch. He flicked his rifle to automatic and unloaded the entire clip in a deafening barrage that I felt in my bones more than I heard.
The high-caliber bullets punched through the nearest wolf’s armor plating like it was wet paper. It was torn to shreds before the thing realized it was dead.
Some bullets went past the drone and punctured the wall over Dervaux's head, only missing her by a hair breadth. The woman dropped to the floor. She was still screaming.
It was like time suddenly stretched. The remaining wolf flew through the air, a cannonball of steel, fangs, and hate. It was aimed straight at Derry’s neck and its maw glinted in the moonlight.
The ex-CIA director was already turning his hips towards the drone, powering through his bad leg and his wounds like they weren’t there. The distance his rifle had to travel was trivial. The speed of the drone, though…
Two years ago, before Derry had died and been brought back to life, he’d have done it.
Today, he pressed the trigger just as the drone’s paws pushed him to the ground. The arc of bullets went wide and sprayed over the ceiling, showering everyone with a rain of dust and debris.
The man and the wolf fell together to the floor—the rifle went flying out of Derry’s hands and into a faraway corner.
Derry tried to get the drone away from him, but it was too heavy. Its maw closed over and over against Derry’s arm, tearing away chunks of flesh and muscle. I saw flashes of bone between the glint of metal.
A blink later, the wolf reached down, pushed Derry’s frantic defense away with one lightning-fast paw, and tore a good chunk out of the man’s neck. An arc of blood sprayed away.
The ex-CIA director looked at me as the life ran out of his eyes. He grinned like a madman before turning eye-to-eye with Dervaux's drone.
He weakly raised the fist of his remaining arm and shoved something into the wolf’s mouth.
It was like he had shocked me back to life. Time returned its normal flow. I realized I had been screaming this entire time—not that I could hear myself.
I pushed myself upright with all my strength and dove face-first behind the machinery of the half-Device, trying to put as many solid surfaces between me and the wolf as possible.
Derry’s last act had been to steal my goddamn move.
I didn’t get to see the wolf explode. I hit the floor and the detonation followed instantly. A storm of shrapnel raged over my head.
Then the force of the impact reached me. I could feel how my bones trembled. I blacked out.
Somehow, I had ended up with my back against the cracked window. A spiderweb of cracks was expanding in the reinforced glass surface and the entire panel trembled softly.
Everything around me was appeared marred, covered by a patina of white light. The edges of all surfaces were blurry and covered in angles that I couldn’t decide if were obtuse or straight.
I drew one long, painful breath. If my ribs weren’t broken, they were bruised. At least my lungs were working.
Looking down, I saw small flowers of blood spreading over my shirt. My whole body was covered in dust, cuts, and light (that I could tell) burns.
>
This doesn’t look bad at all, I thought. How long had I been out?
Either only a couple of seconds, or I’d be dealing with brain damage very soon.
I stood up. A miracle in itself, so never mind the way my knees shook. The Device had eaten most of the concussion, and the wolf had eaten most of the small explosion.
The scientists were either dead or unconscious, I could not tell the difference. To be honest, I’d run out of fucks to give about one explosion ago.
Derry had been close enough to the drone’s mouth to have taken the brunt of the blast. His arms were laying in unnatural angles, his body broken beyond survival. My first instinct was to look away from the carnage. But I forced myself to look again. His head wasn’t in much better shape than the rest of him but there was no outside evidence that his brain had been damaged.
If I brought him to a hospital fast enough…but it was a toss-up. The concussive force surely had turned his internal organs to jelly.
As I made my way toward him, my feet hit the VR-Brain. Its visor was cracked, but it had somehow managed to survive intact.
Is this thing built out of adamantium or what?
With one lazy finger, I turned it on. Perhaps I was still on time to reunite with Van, Irene, and the rest of my friends. They would be fighting Keles right now.
I had started the Rune Event, it was only fair that I was there to see what became of it. For better or worse.
My gaze returned to Derry. Near the broken bodies of her wolves, Charli Dervaux was crawling her way to Derry’s handgun, an honest-to-God revolver. It had fallen out of the torn holster on Derry’s hip and into a pool of its owner’s blood. Derry hadn’t had a chance to use it today.
I could see Dervaux's leg was broken, but she didn’t even wince. It was like her entire soul was being poured into each crawl, each movement. Her eyes were like burning embers framed in the flame that was her hair.
This was the woman who had come back from defeat over and over again, who had caused so much pain and suffering while pushing for her goal because she never gave up.