Scavenger: A.I.: (Sand Divers, Book Two)

by Timothy C. Ward

  She stuck her hand out. “Give it to me.” He did. “And the suit.” She took off the male issue military pants she’d taken from the locker room at Fort Pope and handed them and her boots to Dixon. “The boots were a little big, so you should be fine.”

  He didn’t seem happy to give up his suit, but she didn’t back down. So he did.

  Suited up and power button engaged, she donned the visor over her temples and looked into the dive view sights. Dixon’s life source disappeared even as she felt him standing in front of her. She lifted the visor enough to confirm her intuition and he was, in fact, standing two feet in front of her. Visor down, he disappeared.

  She thought back to when he chased her in the law office. She’d had a feeling then of slight invincibility—of what kind she had no idea, until now. Col-o-rado was her mind a wonder.

  A grip tightened around her head. Possibly W’s stubborn insistence not to give up where she was clearly at an advantage. She imagined one of Springston’s towers collapsing in on itself, thinking W was the pieces on the bottom, soon to be buried by greater mass and volume. A flash thought pasted her parents inside, near the top, the floor falling out from under them and then weightless free fall. She shook her head. Temples aching. No. I’m stronger. She pushed back, picturing W’s eyes in her palms and squeezed fists until nails punctured skin and the juice popped inside.

  The grip faded. She was back in control.

  Quake existed in spread out patches of life source, mostly in his extremities, but none above his shoulders. He continued to lay on his side.

  “Quake, when you’re feeling able, hustle down to the ground floor and wake Cool. By then you’ll be fully freed and he may still not be. Dr. Hannu will. By the time you three are ready, I should have gained control of the top floor. Until then, watch out for Jeff, Vik, and Jen. They are fully controlled by W and spreading his seed.”

  Their ability to spread was due to the plasma coursing inside them. This reminded her of the pellets in Dixon’s suit, in a front pocket zipper beside the main zipper. The flat pouch could be taken out, or each of the fifty or so pockets had retractable slits underneath. She took three, lowered one to Quake, then gave one to Dixon and swallowed the last. The splash on her tongue caused a space-out moment of watered eyes and an eclipse of thoughts too many to number.

  Good thing there were plenty more.

  She climbed the stairwell. Dixon followed. Quake’s footsteps signaled his descent.

  On the way up, her thoughts returned to what had happened in her mind when she had sex with Dixon. W had fought her. He’d been exposed as she struck through to networks her advances opened. Some had been unbreakable. He resisted those with sources nearby, such as the computer upstairs and his new recruits, but when she’d reached out to his distant locations the only allowed passages were dead ends. Non-actives or rudimentary processes like retaking paths in the ceiling Star’s supernova had wiped out. W didn’t have anyone, or any nanos, with a direct experience of the event, because those who would have were now unresponsive files in his databank. What she’d read of his processes in Fort Pope were split between rebuilding his network, his walls, and finding Star and Rush.

  But in the concession that left her with Dixon and her sanity outside of W’s control, she’d lost touch with what was going on in their bunker on the top floor.

  It had been a few years since she had zipped up a dive suit. Part of that was giving in to her parents’ plea that she take a safer career route under her father’s tutelage and study air filtration and ventilation systems. A lot of good that study was doing now. Three floors left to climb and it wasn’t as if routing a new vent would be the option to save their lives.

  Unless that was exactly how she could overcome their numbers.

  Her sprint slowed as her mind floated over the memories of what her dad had taught her, carrying with her the M-MAN facts she’d gleaned and the snapshot she’d taken of the room Dixon had been in.

  Her first thought was how she might travel as a nanobot, or in a fleet of a few thousand, undetected and somehow float into the bodies of those whom W controlled. But she didn’t know how the nanos passed from one point to the next. It didn’t seem to be via air unless as a projectile, like in a sneeze. Plus, how could she transfer thought to such a small particle, let alone a thousand particles, all moving from different vantage points and requiring individual commands and reactions?

  But that’s where the ventilation comes through. Wind from the air conditioning systems would be her propellant. The heat causing drops of sweat down her neck stated the obvious: she would need to turn the air conditioning on first. In her father’s tower, each room had its own control panel, with time and degrees allotted based on how much the tenant paid per month. They came up on the fifty-fifth floor, back to the law office one floor beneath the top. She had seen something that could be an air control box. But how will that help me travel up through a vent shaft?

  She thought back to W’s infrastructure at Fort Pope and how nanobots could crawl along and within walls through assimilation. She stopped at the landing outside the door to Fifty-Five. “I have an idea, Dix. Come here.”

  Inside the reception desk room facing the law office entrance, she found the gray box with the flip open panel under a blank screen. The switch was leveled at COOL and the fan set to ON, but clearly nothing was working. “A breaker.”

  Dixon heard and nodded. They both searched the floor for a breaker box. She found it in the back room where she’d left him to wrestle Quake. Most of the breakers needed reset. Once she did, it only took a few seconds to hear air passing through the vent in the ceiling. Thanks for the power, W.

  She didn’t want to travel back into the same room, so next was finding a quick route into the top floor air space. She took a chair over to a vent close to some cabinets and climbed atop.

  “Carroll?” Dixon walked in and after a stretching glance, found her on the cabinet near the ceiling. “What are you doing?”

  She unzipped her secondary front pocket, took out a pellet, swiped sweat off her forehead, smeared it over the pellet, and pressed it into the metal vent shaft. She held her hand there until nanos absorbed and assimilated into the metal around her hand. The pellet melted inside and she felt a kind of spider of nano-built legs carry it toward the conjoining shaft that would take it up to the fifty-sixth floor.

  50 - Carroll (6:10 am)

  Carroll’s dive view of the ceiling two feet from her head was a long wall of red, with the purple space of air to her left and below. Her next step was to switch to the extension of her self surrounding the pellet her nanospider now carried inside the vent shaft, but she was weary of what it would feel like to abandon her body. The separation was like jumping between two high cliffs.

  A misstep here could cost her life.

  “Are you okay?” Dixon asked.

  She shooed his comment and distraction.

  “Sorry.”

  She pressed her hand out, then relaxed it back at her side and focused again on the piece of herself separated by air and metal. It’s okay. I can come back. She mostly believed that. What other choice did she have? Storm their front door two versus seventeen? What if they were coming? She sat up and blinked to dock view. Dixon glanced back at her from the doorway, pistol clutched in his grip.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “What if they come while I’m focusing on moving the nanos?”

  He shrugged. “Can you move while moving them?”

  “I don’t know. It’s weird. The plan was a lot easier before I had to do it.” She didn’t have time to fight in her body and maneuver nanos. Her plan had become wildly stupid and it was likely too late to try another.

  “I’ll take care of us here. Maybe they aren’t even coming. Maybe they’re content to stay in their hole and wait for more recruits.”

  She doubted it.

  “Get back to your plan. I saw Rush break open a thick steel door with that suit. If it comes
to that, we can make a hole in that wall.” He pointed behind him, in the direction of the hallway. “I’ll keep watch so you have enough time. But you need to get to it while we have the element of surprise.”

  She nodded. The suits they had were not like hers being surface sewn with visors pieced together and rewired countless times since the apocalypse. This was her chance to influence a world into something better so she and Dixon could have children without fearing their lives ending like Star and Rush’s son had.

  This goal helped her focus and, before she could ask for a countdown, she passed into the space lit by the glowing blue pellet. She expanded her presence to a globe with the ease of a breath. She saw the shadows and blue light from countless vantage points. I am still Carroll. I am still me. I am strong enough to do this. I am doing this.

  As she exhaled, the feel of breath passing over her lips pulled her into her real body. Like in diving. Miles different, but same enough. She sent her imagined body and its nanospider form as fast as its spindly legs could traverse the vent shaft. Leaving the spider to its work, she rolled over in her real body and dropped to the floor.

  Dixon’s footsteps travelled out of the kitchen.

  “Dixon, wait.” She met him holding the door to the hallway. “I’m coming with. I can do both.”

  “Okay.”

  As they walked, curiosity turned her gaze up to the red ceiling, and if she could see her nanospider. The red ceiling faded to a transparent blue outline of edges and the glowing inch diameter of green. Wow. The outline view allowed her to see the ventilation shaft infrastructure, the rooms on their floor, and best of all, the floor above. Seventeen bodies glowed life source shades of red, blue, orange, and green. The doorway entrance to their room was a shield of green. Patches of green also seeped into the walls from points where thirteen of the bodies stood, hands palm out and pressed into the wall. The four other bodies were congregated by the door, hands held in place to fit the long outline of automatic rifles.

  Carroll kept her head pointed at the door as she walked left through a doorway.

  “You see something?” Dixon asked.

  “Yeah.” She shifted, walking into a room and glancing over her shoulder. They were still there. “I can see the top floor.”

  “Wow, really. What do you see?”

  She passed into the lobby, walking toward the exit. “M-MANs growing out from bodies into walls. Four of the seventeen are hudd—” one pushed open the door and all four filed out in a jog. Carroll sped up her stride, pushing Dixon to do the same as she lowered her gaze to the door. “They’re coming.”

  Dixon readied both of the pistols he’d taken from Quake and Marco while Carroll had her DL in a firm grip. Her spider was climbing a vertical section of the vent shaft past the line between theirs and the top floor, a good ten feet from the nearest section of green-infested wall. Thankfully, the M-MANs hadn’t reached the vent shaft.

  The green wavelengths passing through their hands and into the wall showed their suits powered the M-MANs’ growth, but they were weaker suits than she had. Not only was hers was the only one powered by N3—a term grasped from a knowledge databank she had yet to fully explore—but she was the only one with N3, and she had plenty.

  Screw taking W by surprise.

  The leader of the four took his first step around the bend of the stairwell, rifle pointed at the door she was fifteen yards from using as an exit.

  Before taking them on, she had another plan in mind. She unzipped her suit and slowed to a walk. Dixon turned back, possibly noticing the steadying of her dive light’s shake. She stopped under a vent opening and licked a pellet. N3 leaked onto her tongue in a glorious shiver. Her mind flushed with pleasure as she lofted the pellet at the panel on the ceiling and directed nanos to catch and replicate metal into spider shapes. She licked five more pellets, tossed them at the panel, ensured they landed and stuck, then did it again with six more, matching one for one, including the spider already on its way, with the thirteen bodies on the top floor.

  Dixon glanced between her and the door ten yards down the hall.

  The lead diver reached for the door handle.

  Carroll concentrated EM into her fist and pulled it back, embracing the tremor. “Dix, duck.”

  He did.

  The diver opened the door.

  Carroll threw a jab of EM down the hall. A pink spear of EM lanced from her fist, controlled by her mind, at a section of wall she pulled out and flattened in time for the ricochet. The rebound sent the EM lance through the door and throat of the diver on the other side.

  He collapsed before he could scream. His body pushed the door shut as he fell.

  The three divers staggered on the stairs.

  She threw another EM charge, this one a ball, tossed at a lob as she prepped for a left-handed stickball swing. As soon as it lined up with the door, she swung her imaginary bat. It rocked the pink EM ball at a line drive for the door. Her mind broke the ball into three shards before they passed through. Each one struck and pierced their target before they knew what happened.

  “Got `em.”

  Dixon, on his knees, glanced back at her before proceeding toward the door, pistols ready. He stopped and assessed the door, then leaned in and peered closer. He put his pistols in his waistband and turned back in shock. “That’s one way to do it.”

  He turned the handle and heaved his shoulder into the door. The frame squeaked as it jerked half a foot forward.

  Carroll glanced at the vent above her. Twelve new holes had been bored through the horizontal slits. She walked on as their replication tickled her scalp as intimately as tiny feet stepping into the rivulets of her brain.

  When she reached the doorway, Dixon was unzipping the dive suit off the lead diver, a tan girl with constellation tattoos on her neck leading down under her sweat stained tank top and down her bare and cut-scarred arms. “Nice shooting.” He motioned at the steel shaft protruding from the front of her neck, propping her head off the ground. “Did you mean to leave me a suit undamaged?”

  Carroll blew him a kiss. “You’re welcome. But hurry.” She shoved the door open another few feet and stepped over the body, then helped pull the suit off the dead woman’s legs. “W can ruin part of my plan if he gives up before we arrive.”

  Dixon, in a shirt and underwear, stepped into the dive suit. He zipped up, lowered the visor, and wiggled his thumb and pinky. His name appeared on her visor’s dash and faded to a D icon. “Flow to go,” he said through linked comms.

  “Right.” Carroll, knowing what W had done to revive Marco, took the knife off the slide holster on her suit and jabbed it into the base of the lead diver’s spine.

  “Whoa. She’s dead, Carroll.”

  “So was Marco. W can regenerate the dead. This will at least slow him down short of us having gas and fire to burn them.” She severed the spinal cord of the other three divers and proceeded up the stairs to the top floor, hoping she hadn’t shown her hand too soon and W realized he was better off frying the circuits he’d built than letting her have them.

  Because she would have them.

  51 - Dixon (6:13 am)

  Dixon followed Carroll because, what else was he supposed to do?

  The pellet he swallowed twenty minutes ago was still working its buzz of energy, but she topped his pace by a half set of stairs, her dive view form disappearing around the bend. His foot landed half on, half off one of the steps. He stumbled forward. “Carroll, wait!”

  By the time he made it to the top floor she was gone and the doors to the main room had a large hole crashed through their center. Her DL’s sizzle echoed from inside as a bright blue light flashed in rapid pulses. Dixon built his speed back up, running with pistols in his hands and readying himself to jump through the hole Carroll must have made in the door. Greens and yellows blended their electric vines across the door’s surface like a pit of snakes pit wrestling for a meal.

  Four strides from the door, the DL pulses stopped.
<
br />   The room silenced.

  He leapt into the hole, ducking his head and crouching midair to fit in the narrow space which would have been enough for Carroll’s smaller frame. A zap of energy shocked the back of his head, scratching long gashes over his scalp.

  His visor view blinked and returned back to normal. Dixon continued the momentum of his landing to sprint for the sand spilling out from a window in the back, loosed by Carroll’s charge. He didn’t see her life source, only the path she made in the sand.

  “Help, Dix. They’re fanning out.”

  He glanced around the room as he ran for the window. No bodies. No computer. Green yellow tendrils stirred in pockets where the green wasn’t solid.

  “What happened?” He refocused on the window, sending EM into his projected point of entry.

  “W’s going mobile. My pellet spiders can’t swim. So it’s us two against thirteen divers, and they’ve spread out. Probably going to—” she exerted a growling breath “—gotcha. Make that twelve. They’re circling around. I’m going right. You go left. Might try and find a lower entry point back into the building.”

  Their odds have certainly balanced out, if not tipped back in W’s favor, but Warren was a sailor and a diplomat, not a diver, so as long as they were in the sands, he’d bet on himself, and even Carroll. Her couple years out of practice in a suit didn’t seem to be slowing her down.

  He replaced his pistols in zipped-shut front pockets, put his respirator in his mouth, sucked a deep breath and dove into the sand.

  The familiar suction pulled him in to its orange horizon. He kicked left as the red shape of the building rose past his left shoulder. Down its long side swam five distant shapes.

  He made ground before they disappeared around the edge of the building, still a good ten strokes ahead of him.