Infinity Reborn (The Infinity Trilogy Book 3)

by S. Harrison

  It’s an average size, not very big but not too small, either. The forest-green wallpaper is patterned with gold crests surrounded by leafy vine designs. It looks expensive. The adjacent wall has a door with a frosted window, and I can see silhouettes passing by on the other side of it. I’m sitting on the edge of a messy single bed, and there’s another against the opposite wall, but unlike this one it’s neatly made. This side of the room has clothes strewn all over the place. The other side is tidy and ordered.

  Outside, through the tall windows on the adjacent wall, I can see the light of the afternoon sun shining over tiled roofs and brick chimneys and through stone arches into a grassy courtyard lined with buildings that remind me of old English cathedrals. Small groups of teenage girls in school uniforms are walking through the courtyard, chatting and giggling and sharing pictures on their computer slates. I look down and see that I’m dressed in a white button shirt and plaid skirt, too, just like they are, just like the girl sitting at the desk in this room is. I quickly assess the situation. For some reason command has planted me in a school of some kind and dressed me like a student. I’ve been activated, but I don’t have any mission details. I’m not hearing any instructions in my head, and I don’t have any weapons or equipment. Something about this doesn’t feel right at all.

  “Where am I? What’s your name?” I ask the frizzy-haired girl with glasses. She looks up at me with a half frown, half smile.

  “What?” she asks.

  “Are you my contact?” I ask. “What are my mission details?”

  She looks at me, clearly confused, so I rephrase the question. “I’m requesting information regarding my mission objectives. Do I need a code word for you to surrender them? I don’t recall being given one.”

  “Very funny, Finn,” she says, smiling as she turns back to her computer slate. “Your mission objective, as you call it, is to do your physics assignment and turn it in to Professor Francis before five tomorrow afternoon.”

  Maybe this is a training exercise? If it is, it’s an unusual one. I need more information. “What day is it?” I ask, becoming more and more confused the longer this strange conversation continues.

  The girl looks back at me, and her eyes narrow behind her glasses. “It’s . . . Thursday.”

  “What’s the date?” I ask. “What month?”

  “Are you kidding?” she says, swiveling in her seat toward me. “It was your birthday yesterday and you don’t know what today’s date is?”

  “Was it my seventeenth birthday?” I ask, studying her microexpressions for deception.

  “Yeah . . . ,” she says, nervously leaning away from me in her chair. “This isn’t funny, Finn. Stop joking around.”

  “Why do you keep calling me that?” I ask as I get off the bed and walk to the desk. I slide the girl’s computer slate to me and swipe away the holograms.

  “Hey! What are you doing? That’s my homework!”

  I ignore her as I open a connection to the Hypernet. A search engine holograph pops up over the slate, and I speak into it. “Access command, BCT Division, authority nine fourteen.”

  A holoscreen opens over the surface of the computer. Lines of encryption flicker all over it, then clear away to reveal a black diamond shape revolving inside a silver circle. “Bio scan verified; log-in voice pattern recognized. Access granted,” says a calm male computerized voice. “Welcome, Infinity One.”

  “Hello, Onix,” I reply. “What’s my current mission status?”

  “There are no missions currently underway,” says Onix.

  “Then why have I been activated?” I ask.

  “There is no record of your activation. You have not been activated.”

  “I’m speaking to you right now, Onix, so, obviously I have.”

  “You have not been activated,” he replies annoyingly.

  I feel angry frustration beginning to boil in my gut. No mission parameters, no weapons, no instructions, and no record of my activation. None of this makes any sense. I take a breath and decide to retrace my steps. “Onix, what was my last mission?”

  “Your most recent mission was the assassination of Mr. Bernard Munce, former board member of Blackstone Technologies. The mission was successfully completed, resulting in his termination, last night on the rooftop of his private residence in Paris, France, at ten thirty-three p.m. local time. Well done, Infinity One.”

  “Who’s Bernard Munce?” whispers the frizzy-haired girl. “Is that why you were away from school yesterday? Wait a second,” she says, sitting to attention and glaring at the slate. “Is that real? That can’t be real.”

  “Thanks, Onix. Log out.” At my command the holoscreen vanishes and the slate goes blank.

  I look at the girl and suddenly feel pity for her. “You’re not my contact, are you?” I ask even though I already know the answer.

  She shakes her head, clearly confused. “Was that . . . what I think it was?” she asks, her wide eyes flicking from me to the slate and back again. Her mouth drops open. “That was an encrypted site. A Blackstone encrypted site!”

  I was so caught up in getting to the bottom of all of this that I didn’t stop to think about what this girl was witnessing, and to make it worse she seems to have a vague idea of what she just saw. I’ve never killed a civilian who didn’t deserve it, but it looks like I don’t have any choice but to silence her. I look around the room. There’s a bathrobe slung over the back of a chair. I can use the belt around the waist to hang her by her neck from the antique coat hook bolted to the wall; it certainly looks robust enough to take her weight. And sadly for her, the way kids are relentlessly bullied these days will make it look like just another tragic teen suicide.

  I stand and apologize as I walk to the chair with the bathrobe on it and pull the toweling belt free from the robe’s loops. “I’m sorry. But you shouldn’t have seen any of that. I’ll try to make this as quick and painless as possible.”

  She doesn’t seem to hear me at all. “That was an encrypted Blackstone site,” she gasps again, still staring at the slate. “You didn’t tell me you could access the Blackstone mainframe, Finn!”

  I can’t help feeling a tiny bit bad. I’m about to throttle her dead, and the poor thing has absolutely no idea. I think that’s probably for the best, and I really will try to make this fast. I wrap the belt tightly around my fists, making a taut garrote between them, and silently approach her from behind.

  “Finn, show me that again,” she says excitedly as she pulls the slate closer and taps the “On” button.

  With a slightly remorseful sigh, I quickly whip the garrote over her head and loop it around her throat, twisting the two ends together behind her and squeezing as tightly as I can. She doesn’t even have time to struggle before I quickly jerk the belt upward and hear the bones pop apart in her neck. Her body goes limp, and it’s done. Quick and simple. She’s dead.

  Well, at least that’s exactly what I imagine would have happened if my body would actually move right now. I have absolutely no idea why, but instead of strangling this girl to death, I’m frozen to the spot, my arms have dropped to my sides, the belt is unraveling from my hands onto the floor, and I’m staring at the back of her head in confusion as she scrolls through the holograms floating above the computer slate.

  She glances over her shoulder at me, and all I can do is look at her in bewilderment as an intensely unpleasant feeling shudders through me. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think it was . . . guilt. Do I actually feel guilty just for thinking about killing this meaningless stranger?

  “Finn, what are you doing?” she asks. “Show me that classified access point again.”

  “You do realize that I’m trying to kill you, don’t you?” I murmur as she leans forward over the slate and begins scanning through the search history. “I mean, I don’t really want to terminate you but . . .”

  “Stop messing around,” she says, prodding at a holoscreen floating over the slate. “Whoa. The memory cache, the har
d drives, everything has been wiped clean; even my homework is gone.”

  “Hey, who’s been using my computer?” says a girl’s voice on the other side of the door.

  “What’s going on?” says another girl just outside the room. “My assignment has disappeared!”

  Out in the courtyard groups of girls are looking bewilderedly at their slates; some are shaking them, and some are just staring blankly at them as they poke and swipe ineffectively at their surfaces.

  “Every computer in a two-hundred-foot radius has been erased.” I say the words as if I’m trying to impress this girl, and even though I can’t for the life of me figure out why I would want to do that, she does indeed look suitably impressed.

  “Holy crap!” she says as she turns and grins up at me. “Technically they’re completely possible, but I’ve never actually seen a localized blanket delete before! That’s next-level stuff, Finn; how did you . . .”

  Her expression suddenly drops, and the mood in the room darkens. “That was real, wasn’t it?” she says, her voice quivering. “You actually killed a man in Paris last night, didn’t you, and when you said that you were going to kill me a minute ago . . . you . . . you actually meant it.”

  I nod. “I’m sorry.” I take a step toward her, and I can tell by the way she holds up her hands and her eyes crease at the corners that she knows I’m deadly serious.

  “I won’t say anything. I promise. You’re my best friend, Finn. Please don’t do this.”

  I pause and look at her curiously. “Why do you keep calling me that?” I ask.

  “Because . . . that’s your name?” she stammers.

  “And I’m your . . . best friend?” I ask, frowning at her.

  She nods emphatically.

  I’m suddenly curious. With my eyes glued on her, I walk to the bed and sit down. “How long have you known me?”

  “I dunno,” she says, shrugging as she slowly lowers her hands. “About three years I guess.”

  Now I’m completely intrigued. “And . . . what am I like?”

  She’s frowning and squinting at me again, like I’m a crazy person. “Just indulge me,” I say.

  “I dunno,” she says, eyeing me nervously. “You’re intelligent, quiet, and kindhearted . . .”

  “You’re not saying that just to keep me from killing you, are you?”

  “No, I swear,” she says, shaking her head.

  “What else?”

  “Um . . . you like horses, you adore science, and you’re really good at maths. I mean really good. The way you manage complex processes in your head without thinking is incredible. I’m actually quite jealous of that.” Suddenly she sighs and sneers like she has an unpleasant taste in her mouth. “Oh and you’re in love with this guy called Carlo who lives in Italy, even though you haven’t seen him or spoken to him in years and he never texts you back—”

  “Stop,” I grunt at her, and she flinches in her seat. “I don’t remember any of that. That’s not me. You’re lying.” I lunge off the bed and grab her by the collar of her shirt. “Did Captain Delgado put you up to this? Is this a test? Because if it is, I don’t like it, and you can tell him that it’s really starting to piss me off!”

  “No, I don’t even know who that is,” she whimpers. I study her face. Either she’s an expert liar, or she’s actually telling the truth.

  I let go of her collar and flump back onto the bed. I feel stunned and confused and angry and sick all at the same time. “Are you saying that I have a whole different life, and that for some reason, I have no memory of it . . . whatsoever?”

  “I don’t know,” she says, gingerly smoothing her rumpled shirt. “Is that what I’m saying?”

  “Yes, I think it is,” I reply, staring into nowhere. I quickly look up at her. “Does this Finn person have . . . parents?”

  The girl leans forward and looks into my eyes. “You’re really not Finn, are you?”

  “No,” I say sternly. “My military designation is Infinity One, and I’m a Vermillion-Class weapon created for the Blackstone Covert Tactical Division.” I frown and snort, surprised at myself for blurting out highly classified information. “I also don’t know why I’m telling you this.”

  She smiles. “Well, for one, no one would believe me if I told them, and two, you’d easily kill me if I did.”

  “That’s true,” I reply, even though, after the guilt I experienced before, I doubt I could raise a finger toward her without feeling like I was about to torture a basketful of puppies.

  “Can you feel Finn inside your mind?” the girl asks.

  I frown at the ludicrous question. “No.”

  “Wow, this is wild,” she says as her stare flicks and scans over my face. “So are you some kind of sleeper agent or something?” From the way she’s looking at me, I feel like a zoo animal or a museum exhibit. I’m finding her bizarre reaction and sudden acceptance of this whole situation more than a little disconcerting.

  “I don’t know,” I respond, and it’s my turn to stammer. “I train, and I execute mission objectives and . . . nothing else. I’m a weapon. That’s what I was made for; that’s all I ever wanted to be. That’s what I am.”

  Her eyes narrow like she’s pondering something. “So . . . you’ve never wondered about all the time you can’t account for between missions?”

  I shake my head at the ridiculous notion. “Absolutely not. I know exactly what happens between missions. I’m either training or put in neural stasis and stored in a secure location until I’m required again.”

  “No, you’re not,” she says. “Between missions you attend classes, and on weekends we go into London together, eat junk food, and go to the movies.”

  The girl stares at me, and it’s plain to see that she’s stunned. “Everyone’s heard the urban legends about mind control and how people can be murdered by Blackstone exploding their cybernetic organs. But they’re only stupid stories. Either you’ve got some acting skills I’ve never seen before, and you made that website as part of an elaborate prank, or everything you’ve told me is real.”

  “This is no prank,” I reply.

  She shakes her head and gives me a look that I recognize as pity. It’s the first time the expression has ever been directed at me. “I’ve been watching them for a long time and always suspected Blackstone Technologies did some highly immoral things, but this is nuts. Infinity One . . . they’ve made you into a slave. Worse than a slave, because at least slaves actually know that they’re prisoners.”

  Her words stab me like a knife in my back. I’ve performed military-sanctioned executions, my hands have been elbow deep in blood, and I’ve returned to base with brain matter splattered on my uniform more than once. But the thought that I’ve been duped into mindless servitude for my whole life disgusts me more than every scream from every contorted face of everyone I’ve ever shot, stabbed, strangled, or decapitated.

  “That can’t be . . . it’s not true,” I say as I try to absorb the enormity of this betrayal.

  The girl leans back in her chair and taps her finger on her chin. “Y’know, with your access codes and my hacking skills, I bet I could help you find out more.”

  My eyes narrow suspiciously. “If you’re an enemy operative and this is some kind of trick to expose proof of my covert actions, then . . .”

  “You’ll kill me. Yeah, we’ve already established that,” she says as she nods and smiles with a strangely enthusiastic gleam in her eye. “Look,” she says, pulling her chair closer. “Any serious hacker would give their left arm just to get a glimpse inside the most secure computer system on the planet, and after what I just saw, meeting you is like getting a backstage pass to the best show on earth. I’ll help you find out as much about yourself as I can, and all I’m asking is to come along for the ride. We won’t get caught. I guarantee it. What do you say?”

  I study her face closely for the slightest hint of treachery, and all I can see is an excitable nerd with a mischievous streak. I do need to know how
I was activated without authorization, and I definitely want to learn everything I possibly can about this Finn person and why a whole side of my existence has been completely hidden from me. I want answers, and somehow—I don’t know why—I feel that I can trust this girl.

  “Exactly how good a hacker are you?” I ask.

  She smiles. “Well, there was the time my mother scheduled a flight to a business meeting in Switzerland instead of staying home for my tenth birthday.”

  “So?”

  “So . . . I shut down the air-traffic control grid and grounded every plane in Europe for seven and a half hours. I got to have cake and ice cream with my mother . . . and I never got caught.”

  I can’t help but smile. I like this girl already.

  “OK then,” I say. “Where do we begin?”

  She beams at me. “Well, first we’re gonna use your access to get into all the classified files we can.” She thrusts a hand out and grips my palm tightly. “It’s nice to meet you, Infinity. I’m Bettina Otto.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  She’s still gripping my hand tightly as I look down into her big brown tear-filled eyes.

  “It’s me,” she says, her voice quivering. “Please say you remember me?”

  Her name drips into my mind like water tapping a beat on a tin can.

  “Otto. Your name is . . . Bettina Otto. We . . . we share a room at school. That’s where we met.”

  “Yes,” she replies, smiling and nodding. “But you’ve always called me Bit, remember?”

  “Of course, Bit,” I say, returning her smile.

  “She almost didn’t remember your name. She’s brain damaged,” an angry-looking boy says from the other side of the room.

  Bit turns and glowers at him. “Shut up, Brent. She’s just confused!” she barks. “I’d like to see how you’d be if you had a monorail track collapse on your head!”

  “The silver towers,” I whisper to myself. “Falling.”

  “You remember?” asks Bit.

  “Yeah . . . I think so. It’s hazy, but . . . I remember the sound, and . . . there was so much dust that I could hardly see; everything was falling all around me, but then . . . nothing.”