The Seventh Glitch

by Ronel van Tonder

  She could barely force herself to speak. “I helped you—”

  “And I’m grateful.” He looked down again, and then held out the rootkit for her. “But be honest, Kitty. There’s nothing for you to go back to.”

  Air hissed into her, but he lifted a hand before she could speak.

  “You’re a cripple. Even Will didn’t want you anymore. You’re nothing but—”

  “How?” Kitty shook her head. “How did you… I never told—”

  “What’s the point?” He stepped closer, proffering the disk again. “What if you could make a difference? What if your stunted life could mean something?”

  He was within arm’s reach now, crude mouth drawing up into a smile.

  “What if you could destroy the most corrupt corporation in the world? Annihilate them? What if you could make devastation rain down on them like… their new world order’s Armageddon.”

  Lucy shoved the disk into her stomach. He lifted her wrist and pressed her hand over it.

  “Would you do it? If you could become the cornerstone of a revolution?” His words had some force to them again. “What if you could draw first blood in the largest cyberwar this planet’s ever seen? If you could secure a place in the front lines of the most historic event ever to take place? Where we push back the one percent, crushing them once and for all?”

  Kitty drew breath for the first time in an hour. Her fingers tightened around the disk. She tugged it free from Lucy’s overlapping grip, and held it out.

  “What does it do?” she asked in a thick voice.

  Her head was cloudy with exhaustion. Thoughts arrived and departed in a bank of fog: hulking trawlers ghosting through a mist-wreathed calm. The pain had slunk back but was no longer important; it ebbed at the edge of what she considered consciousness, if it still meant the same thing it had before.

  Before The Game. Before now. Before Lucy.

  “What does it do?” she asked again, insistent. She tried crumbling the rootkit with fingers that were as dumb and thick as sausages.

  “It will break the world.”

  “We’re in a game,” she said. “That doesn’t even make sense.”

  “A game that’s linked to more than ten million minds.”

  “There’s only a few players—”

  “You think they’d just let you go when you disconnected?” Lucy gripped her hand again, closing her reluctant fingers over the disk. “They have unrestricted access to your mind now. Have since you connected. They’ve downloaded everything: your thoughts, your dreams, your wishes. Your desires?” He pressed against her, his other hand gripping the back of her neck, shaking her. “They have everything. They own you now. They control you now.”

  Her mouth opened, but she couldn’t form any words. Even those lone, ghostly thoughts of before had finally departed. All she was left with now was an achingly empty void absorbing her.

  “I’m so tired,” she whispered.

  “Me too. I’m tired of the lies, Kitty.” Lucy gripped her face. “I’m tired of being force-fed toxins, of being told death is the answer, of having to watch the world grow fat and lazy and accepting of its fate.” His voice was heated now and it quavered with emotion. “I’m not a slave. I refuse to be treated as cattle. And I will not stand by anymore, watching as another generation succumbs to this self-enforced tyranny.”

  He tore the disk from her hand and held it up, studying it for a moment.

  “Make it happen.”

  “Me?”

  “You, Kitty. Make it happen.”

  “Then I can go home?”

  Lucy was quiet for a few seconds. “Then we’ll leave this place.”

  She looked up at him, hearing a catch in his voice.

  “You’ll leave too?”

  “Home…” he said the word carefully. “Wherever you go, that’s where I’ll be going, too.”

  Kitty held out her palm. Lucy set the disk down on it, staring at her. She took a deep breath.

  “How?”

  He grabbed hold of her arms and she looked up at him, eyes feeling as if they could slide shut and stay closed forever.

  “I’ll find you,” he whispered.

  “What?”

  “If—If there’s still a me. Still a you. Then I’ll find you. I swear it.”

  “No promises with a…” Kitty said. She was starting to slur, now. Lucy’s face smudged for a moment, regaining focus only after she forced her eyes wider. “Lying, cheating…”

  “Sneaking, piece of shit cracker,” Lucy finished.

  He gripped her then, drawing her into an embrace that crushed the disk between them. Kitty tried to gasp, but even that took too much effort. Instead, she sagged into him, her avatar going limp.

  “Tell me how,” she said.

  “You ready?” His grip tightened.

  “As… I’ll ever be…” she whispered. Her eyes closed as the cellar lurched beneath them.

  “Then let’s go save the world,” Lucy said.

  “But how?” she wanted to sob out the words, but they emerged as little more than a sigh.

  He showed her.

  The disk exploded. Millions upon millions of fragments scattered from the whole, spinning away in a blur of crude geometry. Where they touched, architecture was eviscerated. The cellar walls looked like a sieve: a flimsy barrier barely capable of holding back the vast, gaping oblivion.

  After an instant masquerading as all eternity, that too collapsed.

  And this time, the void didn’t forsake her.

  Epilogue

  The front door rang.

  Kita jerked at the sound, eyes reluctantly moving away from the wide, curved screen in front of her. The clandestine news report she was watching was being broadcast from a closed room. The reporter’s face had been hidden behind a blur, his — or her — voice too alien to be real. This report — one of many — repeated the same facts as all the others. Debated, same as the others, what lay ahead now: what the future held for a world deep within the clutches of cyber terrorism.

  She flicked her hand toward the screen, and the reporter muted itself. Kita veered around the coffee table with her wheelchair, glancing back just once at the screen.

  They’d mentioned her again. Okay, not her exactly, but what she’d done. What he’d done. How it had set off a landslide that had engulfed General Gaming and caused utter devastation in the stock markets.

  Would she still have done it? Still have been part of it if she’d known what would come of it? Martial law across most countries, the collapse of the global monetary system, and a third world war with an invisible assailant that had no origin, no homeland, no loyalty except to its own kin. And now, a strange calm where everyone waited in hushed anticipation to find out what was coming next.

  The doorbell rang again, and she gave her head a small shake.

  “Coming!” she called out, grabbing her keys from a low table a few metres from the front door.

  Her flat was tiny, but she hadn’t been able to afford anything better after her parents’s death. The insurance money that paid out had barely covered her hospital expenses, never mind the wheelchair.

  She fumbled with the keys, managing to unlock the door and reverse her wheelchair far enough that she could draw it open. Bright afternoon sunlight speared into her dingy flat, blinding her for a moment before she could blink away the sun’s after-image.

  A shadow fell over her, an immediate coolness shrouding her in the absence of Durban’s glowering heat. She dropped her hand into her lap, squinting up at the person standing at her door.

  “Yes?” she asked.

  The stranger reached out. Kita’s heart gave a violent thump against her rib cage as she grabbed hold of the wheelchair’s wheel, but the man’s fingers closed over her wrist before she could jerk the wheel back and escape.

  She would have screamed if she hadn’t been fighting for breath in a chest that felt seven sizes too small. The hand was cold and dry, the grip gentle. She stopped. />
  The stranger crouched down, momentarily blinding her again as he removed the shade he’d cast over her. When she could see again, her heart began to thunder away in her chest.

  “Lucy,” she croaked.

  His smile lifted another centimetre. “It’s Jason, actually.” His grip tightened.

  “Kita,” she managed.

  “Yes, Kita.” He tasted her name, watching her with those same black eyes she’d seen more times than she could remember: in The Game, in her dreams… in her nightmares, sometimes.

  Then he smiled again and stood up. Before she could move, before she could speak, he was striding away.

  “Lu—Jason!”

  He paused with a hand on the railing of the stairs.

  “You’re… going?” Her voice was a pathetic whisper.

  “Lots to do.” Jason twisted to face her, his smile deepening. “But I’ll be back, Kita.”

  The End

  The End

  I really hope you loved reading this book as much as I loved writing it. If you have the time, would you do me a massive favour and leave a review on Amazon? Even a single sentence will do. You have no idea what a difference a review makes to indie authors.

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  Loved it? Hated it? Your feedback is critical to my growth as an author. Plus, I read every review and print them out and stick them on my wall. What do you mean, you don’t you want your name on my wall? It’s not creepy, I promise.

  Not creepy at all.

  If you’re a sci-fi junkie and you’d like a little more of what I have to offer, then head over to my webpage below and get your hands on my entire sci-fi trilogy, The Corrupted SUN Script, for free.

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  About the Author

  Ronel van Tonder is a science fiction author from South Africa.

  Her works include the dark dystopian trilogy, The Corrupted SUN Script, and a standalone sci-fi, the Seventh Glitch.

  When she's not writing, Ronel spends her free time slaying rendered baddies in the form of robots, gangsters and aliens - with any weapon that happens to be at hand.

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  Sneak Peek

  COMPILE:QUEST

  Book One of the Corrupted SUN Script trilogy

  Bloemfontein,

  South Africa

  14 February 2037

  Eric came to a stop, his ears straining for the sound of the girl’s terrified whimpers. As he moved through the farmhouse, the scuffed floorboards protested his weight in a series of creaks and groans. He arrived in the kitchen. A quick scan established the room to be empty.

  “Where are you?” he called out in a tight voice.

  A scrape on the floor behind him made him spin around. A young boy stood in the kitchen’s entrance, his red-knuckled fingers clasping a shotgun. The muzzle dipped as the boy’s reed-thin arms quivered.

  Eric lifted his hands to his head, his hazmat suit crumpling loudly at the elbows. “You don’t want to do that, kid.”

  The boy’s eyes narrowed, his lips compressing as he took aim. Eric dove at the boy, tearing the shotgun from his hands as the boy screamed. Then he straightened and cracked open the shotgun. He emptied the shells into his palm and threw the gun into the corner of the room, hand closing around the boy’s wrist before the child could dart away.

  “Los my!” the boy yelled, jerking his arm to try and escape Eric’s grasp.

  “Where is she?” Eric hissed.

  Tears streamed down the boy’s grubby face. He paled as Eric shook him.

  “Where is she?”

  “Los my uit!” the boy cried.

  Damn, he would be Afrikaans, wouldn’t he? Eric took a knee in front of the boy, easing his grip on his thin arm.

  “Where…” Eric paused as he translated the question in his mind. “Waar is jou… uh… suster?”

  “Sé nie vir jou nie,” the boy mumbled. A flash of defiance widened his watery blue eyes. “Voetsek!”

  Eric’s grip tightened and the boy cringed, perhaps realising he wasn’t in a position to negotiate.

  “I’m here to help you, you little shit. Tell me where she is!”

  The boy’s lips trembled, his bravado evaporating. Eric heard a moan. The boy’s eyes shot to the floor behind Eric, panic etched across his face. Eric pushed the boy away and spun around to scan the room. The kitchen held little in the way of furnishings — a table with flaking white paint, four rickety chairs and a woven rug.

  Eric toed back the rug with his boot. The ancient floorboards met in a neat line that ran under the kitchen table. The table was a massive thing. Eric glanced back at the boy, scrutinising him.

  “It’s too heavy for you,” he said. “Your parents put her in there, hey? Left you in charge with the gun?”

  The boy huddled against the wall. A trickle of blood ran down one skinny leg. Tears coursed through the grime on his face and dripped from his chin. “Your folks show you how to shoot that thing?”

  “Los ons uit,” the boy said, but his voice wavered.

  “I wish I could leave you alone,” Eric muttered, pressing his hip to the table and sliding it across the floor.

  He kicked the dirty rug away, stuck his finger in the latch, and hauled the trapdoor open. Inside the darkness of the cellar, the girl screamed. Eric glanced around for a light switch and then rolled his eyes at his own idiocy. He stepped into the cellar and hesitated, the image of the girl aiming a shotgun at his nuts giving him pause.

  Just in case, he called out: “Don’t shoot!” and entered the cellar.

  When his eyes had adjusted to the dark, Eric scoured the cellar. He found the girl behind a a heap of rotting crates. She squealed as he hauled her out and dragged her up the stairs.

  The boy had retrieved the shotgun. When Eric’s head cleared the cellar door, the boy lifted the weapon, his chest heaving as he aimed it at Eric’s forehead.

  “It’s empty,” Eric said, walking past the boy without a second glance. “Put it down. There’s nothing left for you here.”

  Eric lugged the girl behind him as he exited the farmhouse. The boy would follow his sister. The girl gave up tugging at him and ran along at his side. Her massive blue eyes peered up at him with a mixture of shock and dread. Yellow hair hung in dirty clumps around her face. Eric crested the hill outside the farm, sighing when he saw Bosman seated in the Land Rover.

  “What took you so long?” Bosman asked, giving the two children a single, disinterested glance.

  “Little shit tried to hide her. And he had a shotgun. I knew you should have gone in. These Afrikaners take one look at me and—”

  “Get in, Ndlovu,” Bosman said. “We’ve been out here too long. These bladdie suits only help so much, you know.”

  Eric hoisted the girl into the back of the Land Rover and gestured at the boy trailing them.

  “Come,” Eric called. “You’re going to die out here.”

  The boy stood, one hand swiping at his face to get rid of the tears. Eric ground his teeth and glanced over his shoulder at Bosman.

  “No, go on.” Bosman chuckled. “I love your Afrikaans accent.”

  “Kom seun. Ons gaan ry. Jy…” Eric broke off as he searched for the right word, “Jy gaan vrek hier buite.”

  The boy hesitated before running to the car and scrambling in beside his sister. They clutched each other and the girl collapsed into wailing sobs.

 
; “A shotgun?” Bosman accelerated down the road, the Land Rover eating up the kilometres as they sped back to the intake field.

  “A fucking shotgun. Loaded and everything,” Eric said.

  He stared out the window as the bushveld streamed past. It was hot inside the car, even with the windows rolled down. The ancient Land Rover had no air-con — anything advanced enough to have an air-con was no longer operational.

  “Whoever joined the army thinking it was just a paycheck is hating it now,” Bosman said.

  Eric grunted. That’s what he’d thought when he’d signed up.

  “How long?” Eric asked.

  “Thirty minutes, give or take. We’ll make it.”

  “Close shave.”

  “It’s a good thing you saw the boy.”

  “Ja? Almost had my head blown off.” Eric glanced around to make sure the kids hadn’t recently developed the ability to understand English. “You find the parents?”

  The boy glared at him. Eric sighed. He thought having Bosman around would make it easier. The man was a coloured, though. Maybe it was all the same to the kid.

  “Ja. What was left of them,” Bosman said. “Must have been a gang.”

  Eric shook his head. “I don’t get it.” His hazmat suit scrunched at the elbow as he gesticulated. The sound of the thick, plastic material was exaggerated in the confined space of the cab. “Why do some people just go nuts when shit hits the fan?”

  Bosman snorted. “This isn’t shit hitting the fan,” he said. “This is the fan gone, no more shit because you have to eat it you’re so hungry, and you don’t have energy to throw anything at anything.”

  Eric curled his fingers against his mouth. “That’s one way of putting it,” he muttered. He dipped his head to look at the sun through the Land Rover’s dirty windscreen. “This’ll be the last intake today. Day’s almost over.”