“Have you seen Beth?” Howard asked her.
“No.”
“We came looking for you,” Howard said.
“Who did?”
“Callum, Me and Beth.”
“Callum did?”
The dimmed light inside her brightened. Callum and she might stand a chance.
Howard stuck his foot inside the door to time adjustment. “I’m meeting Beth. I have to go. What happened to your arms?”
“Long story.” And too embarrassing to tell. “Is Callum in Zone 12?”
“I don’t think so.”
Damian passed by, smiling and cocksure. She was certain he knew about her, but she couldn’t be sure security did yet. She knew she’d find out soon enough.
Moments ago, her will to fight had diminished, but the thought of Callum by her side and Damian’s smug presence had it bubbling again. And after five days recuperation in Zone 12 it would burn bright because the situation was unchanged. There was no parental consent, and Alex was plotting to take the embryos. She couldn’t let him do it.
Lana headed to her lab.
She stared at the five babies growing inside the pods in the growing room and dropped in a chair at the control panel. What right did Callum have to grow them without consent? Did no one stop to think how the children would feel, never knowing a mother’s love, never knowing a father’s love. Always searching, wondering who they were, wondering where they belonged? How could people be so selfish?
Cursing Callum, she stepped closer to the growing room and entered her pin-code at the door. The pin-pad flashed red. She couldn’t get in. Why couldn’t she get in?
“I revoked your access.”
Rosie had suddenly appeared behind her. Lana spun around to face her. The glass in Rosie’s glasses was so thick light could barely penetrate through. Her eyes were pin-sized and dark beneath them, and her hair was as dull as Lana’s mood.
“I thought Callum was here. Isn’t he with you?” Rosie didn’t bother to hide her disappointment he wasn’t.
“No, I don’t know where he is. Why did you revoke my access to the growing room?”
“I was asked to investigate the code-changing mystery, and guess who I saw messing with the key pad on the embryo storage safe?”
Lana glanced at the floor. CCTV. Busted. The consequences never did trump her compulsion to change the code. She was simply doing what she had to. Given the chance, she’d do it again. This evil company would not get away with growing human beings without parental consent.
Rosie smiled wryly. “You don’t have to worry. I won’t tell anyone, but you must leave the island.”
“Leave?”
“You will still have your job at RI-UK. It’s obvious you don’t feel comfortable working here, so we think it would be best if you went home.”
“We, who’s we?”
She smirked. “Me and Callum, while you were away…well, let’s say…we got on very well.”
The pain of betrayal was swift and severe. Lana was winded, her chest crushed by the heavy air around her. How could Callum do that? He said he loved her. Why bother to look for her at all?
Devastated, Lana stormed past Hurricane Rosie.
Beth was not where Howard had left her, but the previously locked door to the DZ Zone was wedged open. Howard felt uneasy as he entered and stepped along the corridor. “I’m supposed to meet Beth here.”
Had security come back and taken her away?
Damian followed behind him.
Noticing a pile of shattered glass and a discarded fire extinguisher at the end of the corridor, Howard couldn’t help but panic. He rushed towards it.
A door next to the scattered smithereens had been relieved of its glass panel. With a desperate feeling he crunched over glass, and ducking his head, he climbed through the hole in the door.
Inside the huge space he went from room to room, searching for her. Where was she?
Howard headed back to the corridor. As he stepped on broken glass again, he remembered the cuts on Lana’s arms. He inspected the door frame. Small shards were stuck in random places, and blood specks had splattered on the floor.
“Beth could be in here!” Damian called from mid-way along the corridor.
Howard met Damian’s fretful stare and felt his stomach drop. With a sense of dread he strode towards him.
They peered through the door at the deceleration pod with the glowing green light on its control panel.
“There’s someone in there, sitting on the pod floor,” Damian said.
Howard inhaled sharply. Not, Beth, no…please.
Damian opened the door.
Not taking his eyes from the pod, Howard stepped further inside the room. His watch flashed red: rapid heart rate detected. Damian followed behind him.
At the thought the deceleration pod had been rigged into a time acceleration pod, fear took hold of Howard. He had dreamt of such a fate, but this was the stuff of nightmares. Paralysed, he stopped metres away from it.
Damian braved it and continued inching forward. He opened the pod door.
The repugnant smell of putrefaction assaulted Howard’s nostrils. He heaved and pressed his shirtsleeve over his nose and mouth, but the stench of decay penetrated the fibres. Howard had to see for himself who had succumbed to death by time acceleration. He edged closer.
“Amy! My Amy, what did they do to you?” Damian said.
Howard stared at Amy’s barely recognisable corpse and thanked God it wasn’t Beth. But he was sickened Amy had died in such a cruel way. She would have lived each desperate minute, each desperate hour until death took her. Trapped inside time acceleration, hoping that someone outside would save her. Buried alive inside a pod coffin—there could be no worse way to die. And someone might have watched those hours and days of her life happen at a snap of their fingers.
Howard took in the look of horror on Damian’s face then grabbed his arm and urged him away. “Come on, mate.”
At the West point in Zone 0 Lana stepped off the bus with her suitcases. Her cuts had healed, but her heart had not.
Not being able to hit, yell or scream at Callum stretched her five days inside Zone 12 into the longest of her life. If she ever saw him again, it would be too soon.
But there he was, approaching her as soon as she stepped off the bus. And he was smiling. How dare he smile.
She dropped her bags and charged towards him.
Callum must have registered the look on Lana’s face because he stopped still, pending her furious onslaught.
Lana pushed him hard. “How could you?” Liar.
He stumbled back. “How could I do what? What have I done?”
“You grew the embryos, and you screwed that cow in the office.”
He covered his face while she hit him. Then he grabbed her arms, and she flailed about while trying to free herself from his grip.
“You’ve got it wrong. I did neither. They’d already started growing them when I got back, and Rosie is lying. I told you. I love you. I found the parents’ names and addresses for you. I looked them up on the system.”
Curious and exhausted, she stopped her onslaught, and Callum released his grip on her arms.
He reached inside his trousers’ pocket and frantically yanked out the cotton lining. A look of helpless despair crossed his face. “Shit, I dropped it when security took me away. I didn’t want to explain what I’d written on it.”
She headed back towards her bags. Liars get no second chances.
He rushed to her side and grabbed her arm, but he dropped it just as quickly.
Lana turned around and watched Callum’s face take on a strange, pained, contorted expression.
“Go away, Lana. Back off.” He dropped to his knees, grabbing hold of his head, his face reddening.
She stepped towards him. “What’s wrong Callum?” She thought he was having a seizure.
“Back off; I don’t know.” He slapped his head and face and pulled at his shirt, trying to r
ip it from his body. He tore the cotton and buttons sprang off. “Something is inside my head.”
“Help him!” Lana shouted at the guards sitting behind their station.
Within seconds four guards were there.
Callum rose like a violent drunk, cursing and shouting. His rage from nowhere directed at them. He swung with his left fist and then his right. The guards easily dodged the clumsy blows.
Stunned by a guard, Callum dropped to the floor, twitching and spasming.
Four guards tried pinning him down, and Lana could only watch helplessly.
Chapter Twenty-One
Beth screeched into the parking lot and slammed the brakes on. She flung the door open and yanked herself out of the pickup truck.
The embryos inside the crates would have to wait.
Lana would have to wait.
She had to stop Mad Meda.
Blinded by the reflections from the glistening, white-domed Deceleration Zone, she shielded her eyes and sprinted towards the glass tunnel.
Then she stopped still.
All around her a momentous and thunderous noise was building. She ducked and covered her ears.
Beneath her shoes the earth rumbled, and vibrations rang through her body like a resonating tuning fork. At first, she thought the noise was an earthquake, then she thought it was a volcanic eruption.
She looked behind her. From the launch site a space shuttle shot out from the crater. A wide white cloudy plume trailed behind it as it plunged further up into the clear blue sky. Her babies were leaving already. She dropped on her knees, beat her fists on the Earth. Had she made the right decision?
She had to salvage something from this sorry mess.
She pushed herself up, rushed past the abandoned wire cage and headed towards the tunnel leading inside Zone 0. At the tunnel she scrutinised the glass. Panic set in. Where was the door? She had to find the door. She ran along the tunnel, trailing her fingers along it, feeling for a lip.
Alex hadn’t closed it properly. Maybe he knew she’d come back to stop Meda killing millions of innocent people. She slammed it open and sprinted down the glass tunnel towards Zone 0.
Inside Zone 0 people rushed towards the exits or outside into the ring garden, no doubt curious to find the source of the noise.
She ran past them clockwise towards the West point and Meda’s office.
Shouting, arguing voices up ahead became louder. At the guard’s station she found the source of the noise. Four security guards had pinned a crazed man to the floor. Two had a hold of a leg each, one had a knee rammed down on his chest, and the other was at the top of his head holding down his shoulders. The man trapped beneath thrashed about, fighting for his life, with a strength nearly matching the four guards.
Beth passed by the huddle of stray arms and legs and glanced at the man underneath the guards. She stopped still. It was Callum, and Clayton was one of the guards on top of him. Beth turned towards the fretful woman standing a few metres away. She was Lana, petrified and crying.
Callum stared at Beth, a wide-eyed vacant stare. She’d seen that manic look before, in Jason’s eyes. She knew the suicide code was active in him. He was scratching. He must have had the implant at home. Security should have removed it.
Callum became deadly still and continued staring at Beth. His expression had turned dark, threatening. Only he wasn’t Callum. Callum was lost inside him somewhere. The code had over written his brain, and neurons were firing in places they should not.
But the implant would not stop playing the fake scenes or apply the restore file without the commands she must enter.
Callum thrashed again.
Clayton looked up at Beth, his face red, his arms trembling from the force he needed to apply to Callum’s body.
“Is this anything to do with you?” Clayton said, half-joking, half-serious. “This is not happening again on my watch. Do what you must!”
Her mouth opened then closed. She deserved his reproach. It was everything to do with her. If Callum died like Jason. She couldn’t think it—that was unimaginable.
She passed the brawl and ran up the metal staircase, the steps clanging and vibrating with every pound of her feet.
Inside Meda’s office, at the window Beth had watched the New City illusion through, Meda sat at a small trolley desk on castor wheels—the portable system she’d told Beth she had decommissioned after Jason’s suicide. And the same portable system Beth had pushed around like a tea-lady. But she never was serving tea and biscuits.
The trolley contained everything required for the procedure: the server, syringes, an activation/deactivation panel, the implants, a supply of sedatives. Dr. Bartholomew would first ask the subject a list of pre-immersion questions, and then administer a sedative and inject the implant into their hand. The latest code was taken from the server on the trolley and pushed onto the activation panel, and the activation panel, using a near field comms link, connected to the implant, uploaded the code and activated it.
The last time Beth saw that trolley used Jason had died.
Beth was hesitating, but this was not the time to take years to come up with a plan. She must do something.
Meda’s finger hovered over the system’s control panel while she gazed at the huge screen displaying a map of the UK.
In the location of each New City a dot glowed red, and on the screen in red bold text: Activation Status: Active.
The map zoomed out of the UK, and the world appeared.
Across the United States, South America, Canada, China, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia and India green dots were turning red in huge batches.
Beth slammed Meda’s door open and stepped inside.
“What’s going on, Meda?”
Even now she had a shred of hope this was a simulation or a game, and the scene she’d witnessed downstairs with Callum wasn’t real. Because the thought-text upgrade that would distribute, ‘Be Happy’ could not have been up-loaded with her dodgy version of code that caused Jason to dissociate and commit suicide within forty minutes.
Started with Errors—the words were burnt forever on her grey matter.
But she knew there was no hope. Meda had activated it.
Most flashing city nodes were now solid red on the world map, and the counter displaying the number of implants installing the code was rapidly increasing. Beth felt sick. She’d naively trusted Meda to delete the code.
“If the government finds out Alex has taken the embryos, they will shut this place down. There will be no new tech to save Earth. When all the green lights have turned red. The implant will be active with your code,” Meda said.
Beth scowled at her.
“Don’t look at me like that. I didn’t upload it to everyone’s implant. It’s just for the people who don’t care about the planet.”
“How can you decide who doesn’t care?”
“I filtered in those that didn’t donate their free extra credits or other incentives that came with the upgrade to the green projects. I had no choice, Beth. I’m sorry.”
She spoke as if she was justified in murdering people.
“How many people was that?”
“Five billion.”
“Meda—No!”
“It’s okay; there will be over three billion people left. I didn’t want to do it. Believe me, there’s no other way to reduce the burden on our planet.”
“Where’s the server, Meda?”
“It’s too late to unplug it, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’ve already pushed the code to every child server around the world, and each server is sending it to the implants over the wireless network. The wireless coverage is exceptional in the New Cities.”
The networks wouldn’t stop distributing it. It wouldn’t be marked as a DDOS attack. RI was a trusted site. Code distribution like that was entirely normal. It was the same as updating the operating system on a mobile phone.
Now flashing on the screen: Update delivered to five billion implants. St
arted with Errors.
Jason jumped over the balcony in forty minutes, but there would be a statistical distribution. Some people would be affected earlier. And given the chance Jason might have jumped before forty minutes. When had Meda started the upload?
The office windows vibrated. The equipment on the trolley rattled.
Outside RI, the huge rumbling noise from the crater launch site built to an ear-covering maximum. The second rocket was leaving.
At the thought of her children growing up as slaves under an oppressive political or religious regime, reliant on the goodwill of a few good men or women to free them.
At the thought of the billions of innocents, including her own family, who had received the upgrade, willingly or not.
At the thought of dead Amy, demonic rage possessed Beth. It clamped her in its mighty jaw and shook Beth like a rag doll. When Meda turned away, she launched herself at her and slammed her against the wall.
Meda stumbled, lost balance and fell into a heap on the floor.
Now Beth was at the system’s control panel. But within moments Meda had risen and with freakish strength was dragging Beth by her hair away from the system. Beth grappled for Meda’s hands. Scratching and clawing, she wrenched free from Meda’s grip.
Meda rushed to her desk and yanked open a drawer. Then Meda was aiming a gun at Beth. But that gun was not a stun gun.
“Sit down, Beth.”
Beth backed away, staring down the barrel. She tumbled backwards onto the sofa.
Minutes later the rumble from another shuttle launch started. That was the third and final one. It shook the windows and the screen with its red glowing dots. It jerked Beth’s brain inside her skull. Do something! Do something!
Beth focussed on the gun and waited for her chance. When it came she had to be ready.
Meda finally glanced towards the screen, checking on her victorious progress.
Beth ran at her, slammed her hard into the portable desk trolley.
The gun fired, clanked to the floor and skated across the tiles. Ceiling dust and fragments rained on top of their heads.
Started with Errors (Relative Industries Series Book 2) Page 16
