by Tony Corden
“When Suzluk is satisfied that you genuinely understand what is coming, Billy will take a specially modified hand-held stun gun or taser and apply it directly to the chip. Besides bringing an unthinkable amount of pain, the current not only completely destroys the chip but it fuses what’s left behind to the bone of your skull and heats the micro-filaments which have been extended into your head. Experiments have shown that the heat permanently destroys the sections of the brain near the filaments. You won’t be able to see, hear, smell, or speak ever again. The only sense which seems to remain is the ability to feel pain although there is no way to express it except mindless screaming. Suzluk wanted me to leave you like that, but I don’t need the complication of you being alive.
“Instead, let me explain what will happen after you are made a vegetable. Earl and Billy plan to rape you then take you and your father to the Brisbane River where they will tie cement around your still breathing bodies and drop you in. The ties are water soluble, after a few days you and your dad will float to the surface. The police will find you killed your father in the same way as you did the other man. They will conclude he had been abusing you and in shame and remorse you decided to end his life and yours.”
As Nathan was talking, Leah could see Meredith smiling in the background and Suzluk gloating. Even as her heart sank, she steeled herself to let none of that show on her face. Then, as Nathan paused to see the effect on Leah, she subvocalised to Gèng and said, “Have you recorded that?”
“Yes.”
“Save it to one of the safest storage sites and transfer yourself there as well. John knows about the sites, and I want you to make sure that he gets the information. He’ll check it at an autopsy.”
“Leah, I can make a copy of myself, but I can’t leave you.”
“You can, even if for no other reason than to take the stress off me. I don’t need any more pressure than I have already. I know the copy will still be you, but there is no need for you to deal with what it is like to die even if you’ll never remember it. Also, how did you go at having the nanites form a physical breaker in case of an EPIC attack?”
“It is still under construction, and it wouldn’t be any help for what Nathan described.”
“I see. Please put the schematics for the chip on my vision. If he wants despair, then I’ll give him hope. If I have to die, I’ll do it fighting with everything I have. I have a few ideas for John and Jimmy, which I want to write down. I’ll also send a letter for Mum and Conner. I don’t have a will, so I’ll write one of those.”
Leah’s perceptual speed increased to maximum, and she co-opted three of Gèng’s processing cores as she simultaneously reviewed the chip and tried to think of some way to short circuit it before the threatened taser. She also dictated letters and plans to all her friends including more detailed instructions for Leon, Peter, John, and Jimmy. She wrote out a will and wrote a goodbye letter to Thad trying to express her sadness at leaving him. All the time, she worked to keep any expression from her face.
Leah discovered that the increased perception allowed her to make minute corrections to her facial muscles to stop any hint of her state of mind to show. Just as she had when she’d concentrated in Dunyanin as a glitchwolf, she slowly became aware of the smallest details around her. She could feel the slight draught from the door behind her and sensed when one of the men passed in front of it and changed the airflow. Leah slowly flexed the muscles along her arm and was able to feel the slight give in the ties. Her mind calculated angles and stresses. She asked Gèng to show the exact location of her chip in her skull.
Leah shifted her legs minutely and started to build a detailed view of the amount of give she could feel in the bindings on her legs, thighs, chest and head. Gèng began to add details from her database, and they built up a complete view of Leah’s body and her surrounds. As Leah started to make small movements, Gèng began putting together a model of how the different actions interacted across the whole body. Nathan couldn’t see a reaction in Leah so he waved Meredith forward who began to deride Leah and suggest all sorts of things that would happen to her. With her perception increased, Leah could see small micro-movements as they played over Meredith’s face and compared them with Nathan’s reactions. She slowly built up a way to measure his agreement or disagreement with the things she was saying.
She concluded that while Nathan and Meredith were in agreement that Leah and her dad would be killed, they disagreed about her being abused before she was killed. Meredith revelled in the idea, but Nathan preferred a clean emotionless death. When Meredith slowed down and Leah’s face still hadn’t reacted Suzluk began to rave, but Leah saw Nathan’s eye focus behind her, she saw him give what she imagined he thought was an infinitesimally small nod but lasted for what seemed like minutes to her. Leah felt the air against her change as Earl stepped forward. On her wireframe model, she showed his arm and the most likely configuration of the electrodes to destroy a PAI chip. Gèng suddenly added some notes about the difference between Leah’s chip and the standard PAI chip. The differences were almost negligible on the macro scale, but processors and other connections were in slightly different locations. Even a millimetre could change the way the current moved. Leah contracted her neck muscles, bringing her head as far forward as she could. As Leah felt the two prongs of the taser touch her skin, she rotated her head slightly and then shoved back as hard as she could hoping to get the current to pass through the chip along a particular path to heat the processor so her backwards movement would force the prongs to …
Leah never finished the thought as the electricity arced through the chip and turned it to slag. The current arced through Leah’s body, making all her muscles contract violently. The new growth of hair on the outside of the chip flashed into flame, and where the electrodes had been embedded on the outside of her skull, the skin blistered. Leah’s left leg had contracted then extended so violently that it snapped the tie and almost dislocated her knee. Her increased perceptions overloaded her system with messages of extreme agony, causing her chest and abdominal muscles to contract as a scream was forced from her throat. The strap across her chest broke four ribs, and the strap around her skull stretched with the strain then snapped back, driving the prongs of the taser into the molten slag. Moments later as the current was turned off, Leah’s body slowly stopped shaking as she passed into unconsciousness.