Four hundred and fifty messages from Scar. I tackle the first. Looking at the subjects of her worried, angry, bewildered messages from the time period of my attempted base escape hurts more than the absence of communication from Rabbit.
The subject of her latest message reads, “I have no one else to send this to.” I swallow hard and pour over the text.
It’s late at night. I don’t think you’re receiving messages anymore. Maybe you never were. I don’t know if you’re alive. Isn’t that stupid. But I had to tell someone. The Rosas wouldn’t understand and you know what happened with Diego. I mean, maybe you do, if you read my waves. But whatever. There’s no one I can talk to about this. No one I trust more than you.
So here goes: my friend Sarah tracked down Logan outside of New Orleans. She said he’d fallen in with a bad crowd. People scrapping tech, dealing Flash and worse. Worse things. He got picked up by the Peace Officers two months ago and showed up last week spouting all sorts of crazy nonsense about experiments. About Prothero. He’s got NV Len, but it’s bad. Worse than any strain they’ve ever seen—it’s spreading all over the South and people are calling it another outbreak.
I’ve got to help him. I can’t get him any academy stipend—not if he’s off the grid and on the run from a labor camp. He’s homeless and sick Len. I don’t know what to do or who to talk to... I wish you were here. I really do. You would help me with a plan. I don’t have a plan Len. But I need to get out of here. You escaped. Or you’re dead.
But if you got out of the Academy, I can follow right? Find a way out of here. It sounds crazy. But I can’t stand the idea of him dying alone on the streets. It’s a hard world out there Len, but it doesn’t have to be that hard. It’s not that hard...
The text cuts out where her voice fades off. That’s it. That’s the last message she sent me. What the hell. What am I supposed to do with that? Scarlett trying to escape Fort Columbia. Logan sick from one of the new strains of NV. And I’m being shipped off to KERN in the morning. Far away from the Rosas and the cure that Mateo, and Scar’s brother need.
I limp back to bed and rest my swimming head on the fluffy pillows. It’s not too late. I can change everything. I’ve gotten this far. I’m alive in the belly of Prothero with full access to my band. With powers I’m now more capable than ever of controlling, thanks to Dawson and Reznik. I survived a bombing, a brutal attack by Clinton in the SIM, and a plane crash. I survived months under the cruel guidance of a sadistic mad-woman. I’m fighting a disease that has killed over 2.5 billion people on this planet. The Rosas synthesized a cure from my blood.
I can save myself and take back control of my life. I can escape from this lab. I can subvert Prothero’s desires for my body and soul, help Scarlett escape the Academy, and even save Matty and Logan. My lids close and the heavy weight of sleep presses down upon me.
I can save myself. I don’t need Clinton’s connections or Rabbit’s sacrifices or Matty’s terrorists to do it. I never did.
An alarming buzz from the bands wakes me at 7am. I’m instructed by a disembodied voice issuing from the ceiling to gather my belongings in a duffel and await transport. Two morning duty guards arrive and whisk me away to the food window. After a tube of nutritious sludge, we begin the endless repeating walk down the dreary halls from my nightmares. Excitement and horror stews acidly in my stomach, a nervous anticipation rolling around with the yellowish breakfast substance, tasting vaguely like bananas and toast.
The guards drag me past the open door of a room, and a young, bulky white man strapped to a hospital bed streaks past my vision. The familiar image freezes time and halts my feet.
Clinton Fuller. His eyes meet mine for a brief instant, lacking solid human warmth, filmed over with a limpid mechanical blue. His smooth, sun kissed body is marred by circuitry, similar to that of my temple, but this tech appears joined with his flesh, rather than implanted on it. The circuits are not confined to his temple, they are embedded everywhere. His face, neck, and arms. It makes no sense.
This cannot be Clinton Fuller. He’s failing his last term at Fort Columbia. Or home with his father in the great state of Texas. Or at the KERN facility. He’s not supposed to be here. He’s not supposed to look like this.
His mouth forms my name, lips pulling into a grimace of pain and recognition. My body goes weak, legs giving out from underneath me. I call out to him, collapsing around the pulling, lifting arms of the guards. They respond gruffly, shaking me and yelling for me to get on my feet. We make a sharp turn down a glass enclosed hallway between two buildings and into a separate warehouse structure housing Prothero’s Telepad. I shout Clinton’s name as they drag me through the doors.
The rushing adrenaline in proximity to this powerful piece of technology rips the image from my mind and refocuses me on the current problems and solutions I’ve devised.
I was probably seeing things. Clinton Fuller is not here. My vision of him was a panic induced illusion, brought on by nerves over the revelations of the last twenty-four hours and the anxiety of what I’m about to do. Clinton is not here. I didn't see him. I need to focus.
I relax, breathing deeply and easing into the zen calm Prothero drilled into me for the last few months. I perk up and walk on my own feet. The guards don’t miss a single step or show any sign of surprise at my instant composure. Unpredictability is the norm here.
In the giant transporter room I undress quickly at the base of the Telepad. I’m directed to the center of the glowing rings. They produce an extraordinarily potent humming. It vibrates up into my teeth. A whirling mechanism gyrates below my bare toes—an enormous centrifuge spinning up faster and faster. I crouch down to examine it. The thick glass tubes and the dazzling blue luminosity obscure any coherent visuals, but I sense its composition. The expansive baritone of the machine booms up into the balls of my feet and radiates through my legs, abdomen and arms. There is power here, immense power.
“Telepad charge: phase one. Please remain still.”
I lay my palms flat against the glass separating me from the inner workings of the machine. My eyes roll up into the back of my head and pain slices across my temple. The bands emit a high frequency squeal, like bad audio feedback. They cook the skin of my wrists, letting off an acrid smell and thin wisps of smoke.
But it doesn’t matter now. I am no longer dominated by Prothero’s stifling AI. They can’t hurt me anymore. The telepad is stronger than whatever mutes and contains me. It’s stronger than me. And I can use its power. I focus on the CPU, digging frantically amongst the codes to locate the correct latitude and longitude. I need to make a slight adjustment to the coordinates.
“Eleni,” Dawson's voice cuts through the din of the telepad charging. “I see you in the system. What are you doing?”
I glance over at him, blue heat zapping towards the control room where he stands, protected by metal and concrete and glass.
“Going home,” I say.
The bands burn hotter now, roasting my skin, but I push through the tech wall anyway. I ride over the pain like surfers cresting a wave. A door left of the control room slams open and guards, dressed in combat suits akin to those we wear in SIMs, hustle out, rifles drawn. I throw my mind out to the electrical currents running through their weapons, disabling them with a wrenching gesture of my forearm. The nanites brushed into the hard ceramic plating of their uniforms fizzle out before they can generate shielding. I don't want to hurt anyone here. I just don't want them to hurt me.
The guards press forward, moving towards the platform. They’re going to physically subdue me before I port out of here.
“Telepad charge: phase two. Please remain still.”
My attention spins towards the foundational elements of the room. The lights blink out. I pull the sprinkler system, water falling down on us in sheets. Projections rip from my bands, ghostly images of Clinton Fuller, Corazon Ortega, and Brian Holmes circle me, rifles drawn on the approaching guards.
“Eleni! Stop this!�
��
I flick on the overhead siren to drown Dawson out, flashing red lights blaring on simultaneously.
“It’s too late Dawson! You had your chance!”
I assume a cross-legged, meditating pose on the glass tubes.
All around me, the ring of virtual projections form a solid shield the soldiers cannot penetrate. The slip and squeal of their boots and their shouted comments to one another rise above the scream of the sirens and patter of sprinkler water. The pound of more boots stops outside the locked telepad doors. They’re gonna bring the whole lab down on me if I don’t move fast. It’s now or never.
“Shut it down! Shut the damn thing down!” Dawson barks over the chaos.
The siren and warning red lights cut off. Water cascades from the ceiling in sheets, but the fluorescent lights overhead snap on. Beneath me, the centrifuge moans and reverses direction, enormous kinetic blades and the undulating lights they produce incrementally slowing. Dawson is sucking all the power from the room. It’s a smart move. If he’d done it three minutes ago.
“Telepad powering down.”
“No you don’t.” I grimace, digging my heels into the machine.
I shift slightly on the glass and clear my mind, drawing more energy up from my feet and legs and torso. Dawson and Reznik taught me how to channel the nano electricity and move it into different parts of my body. How to collect and store it. This entire telepad is a giant battery and I’m charged to capacity.
White fulgor explodes up from the telepad core and through my arms and head, heaving past the virtual projections and engulfing the entire room in a fury of light. With everyone sufficiently distracted and the telepad engines back online, I reach out into the mainframe of the control room, and alter the course.
There’s no stopping Dawson from seeing the coordinates. My cards are on the table now. I am heading back to Fort Columbia whether they want me to or not.
“Telepad charge: phase two. Complete. Course alteration accepted.”
Good, we’re back on track. My second to last act of sabotage occurs at the base of my neck, an RFID implanted next to my spinal column. I reach out with the power gleaned from the telepad and the concentrated kinetic distortion flowing through my veins. I crush the life from the implant, its signal wavering and dying with a popping, frying hiss. A trail of smoke rises from the burn wound on my neck. I barely feel it. Later. There will be time to feel the pain later.
The bands sputter and fail to singe my flesh, no doubt forced by Dawson or Reznik or whoever is on the other end of the tech, a final, desperate attempt to trap me in Prothero’s grip. But I’m free now. They can’t keep me here any longer.
“Telepad charge: phase three. Please keep all hands and feet within the vehicle. Enjoy the ride.”
A brilliant flash of blue shines all around me. In my final act of sabotage, I plant a destruction sequence into the DC telepad. It crushes me to do this, but disabling the telepad will slow them down. I bury the self-destruct code, covering it with layers of encrypted data. I link a shortcut to the command immediately following the completion of my port. The thick, angry noise of the AI rolls through my ears like sludge, “We remember. We’re waiting.”
Waiting for what?
“Eleni, don’t do this,” Dawson advises in a tired, beaten voice. “I won’t be able to fix this for you. Not like...everything else you’ve done in the past.”
“I know.”
A second, dazzling flash obscures my vision. How long will it take Prothero to find me? Minutes, hours, days? The telepad de-molecularizes, shooting me through time and space.
My body disappears.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Security Lockdown
I reappear on the other side five minutes later and collapse forward, curled in a fetal position. The human body doesn’t take kindly to being disassembled and reassembled. I push myself to my shaky hands and knees, exposed since the cloak didn’t survive the journey. I crouch, naked, in front of the guards.
“What the hell?” one of the female soldiers asks. She and three others, dressed in standard combat attire, pause in the middle of their conversation at the base of the telepad, rifles slung over their shoulders. “Is this a scheduled port?”
“Who are you?” a male guard squints towards the platform, reaching for his weapon. “You look familiar.”
“Get out,” I suggest in a wobbly voice, the blue glow engulfing me. I absorbed too much energy from the DC telepad. It's got to go somewhere. “Get out now!”
I convey the urgency with a motivating bolt of blue fire aimed in their direction. It sizzles out of my fingertips, cascading in an arch dying limply at their feet. The guards reach for their rifles in response. Not exactly what I had in mind. It was supposed to be a lot more threatening.
“This thing is going to explode,” I say.
“Down on the ground!” a male soldier commands.
“I warned you.” I grit my teeth, using a small portion of the barely contained energy to overwhelm their weapons.
I lose it. I lose control. It’s too much power for me. I can’t maintain it. I shuttle the excess electricity through the core. The voltage shoots from my palms down into the glass tubes and centrifuge, overloading the central processor.
“Warning. Core breached. System meltdown imminent.”
“Get out. Get out now!” a male soldier drops the rifle from his face and waves his squadmates back.
“Told you,” I mutter, arms slipping out from under me. My chin hits the glass casing and stars twinkle in my vision.
With my remaining strength, I tip and roll down the platform steps. The guards, alerted by the groan and whine of the telepad hardware ripping apart inside the tubes, shuffle backwards, yelling out orders.
Someone hits the siren and red warning lights flash. Exhausted, reeling with the effort, I reach out and click off the overhead fluorescents. The energy spilling from the disintegrating telepad boosts the blue glow and I cloak into the dark.
“Where'd she go?” a different male soldier asks. His female companion shrugs.
Lost in the chaos, I crawl towards the privacy screens, stationed near the double doors at the front of the room. My searching hand brushes the ankle of a guard. She stiffens and looks around suspiciously, kicking her boot towards my position. I roll away, cursing under my breath. I need to be careful here. This isn’t like SIM training with Reznik. Humans don’t need heat signatures to locate their enemies, we possess far more finely tuned senses.
“Warning. Core breached. System meltdown imminent.”
The other guards, rifles trained on the telepad, back away from the frightening metal gurgle of the machine. They head towards the large blast doors, concerned with my location, but motivated by a keen desire for self preservation.
Behind the privacy screen, I find a pile of resident uniforms stacked on a chair. I grab the clothes and slip them on. No shoes though.
“Warning. Core breached. System meltdown imminent.”
I dart through the metal doors as they slide shut, close on the heels of the guards.
“Containment shield activated.”
“Oh shit!” a female soldier shouts.
Blue kinetic barriers roll down from the ceiling, shuttering the hallways intersecting the telepad. They block guards from entering the blast area and us from escaping. Another sheet of azure flickers over the blast doors. The guards, panicked and confused, huddle in the middle of the box created by the kinetics.
“System malfunction. System malfunction,” the computer voice sputters, heat warping the last word.
Behind the heavy blast doors, the telepad explodes in a flurry of metal gears and shattering glass. The concussive force of the electric wave picks me up off my feet, slamming my left temple into the white concrete wall behind me. My eye blips. The sharp tang of metal and blood hits my tongue. The wires on my left temple crackle and the cloak around me sputters out like a dying candle. Luckily, the guards to either side of me are k
nocked prone. I lean over to check their pulses, but pause when I see them breathing. OK, not dead. Not dead is good.
Shouting and pounding echoes down the hallway outside the barriers. More guards are arriving. I have to regain control, I can’t let them catch me like this. I can't let them see me. Need to charge the batteries.
I scramble over the inert guards and press both palms against the far right kinetic barrier. It convulses and electricity roars in my ears, peeling off from the barrier and folding over me. I summon the cloak and slump against the wall for support. Need to catch my breath.
“Core meltdown complete,” the computer warbles overhead. “Containment barriers deactivated.”
The filmy blue shields vaporize into thin air and the waiting guards rush past, their immediate attention given to the soldiers littering the black tiled floor. I press myself up against the wall to avoid coming into contact with anyone in the crowded area. Then think better of it. There’s enough chaos happening, I don’t need to worry about bumping into someone. What I need to do is get the hell out of here. I race down the newly opened hallway, pushing past the guards.
The security door at the far end of the hall presents another kind of problem. Since my RFID and band clearances were wiped when I rebooted them, the only solution to escape the telepad building is to hack the system. With the red alert on full force, the mainframe will be on lockdown. I approach the silver sweeping light, reaching out through the tech channels and deactivating the cameras near the door. I decloak, the nanos falling away from me like a snake shedding its skin. The light filters over me, analyzing my body with its greedy, sticky fingers.
“Subject: Unknown. No scan available. Please identify.”
After a full minute of slippery grasping within the security console, it becomes clear mental manipulations are not going to work, so I press my robot hand against the hardware. The wires in my temple light up like sparklers. I tap into the communications channels and cut all communications routed in and out of the Fort Columbia base.
Metal Heart: Book 1: The Metal Heart Trilogy Page 23
