Street Freaks

by Terry Brooks

  His fingers reaching up to touch his heart.

  And without warning, rafts of numbers begin to recall themselves in an explosive flow.

  They surface in fits and starts, in clusters that feel disjointed yet connected. They arise from wherever they’ve been hiding and begin to fit themselves together in ways that immediately feel familiar. His memory hums like a machine. The numbers flow. He recognizes these numbers and their significance.

  He knows what they are.

  He remembers.

  His eyes open and he stares into Cay’s. “What?” she asks at once.

  “Locking codes,” he says with an urgent hiss. “Given to me by my father. I just remembered!” He leaps to his feet and begins looking around hurriedly. “They must be codes to a computer file. It must be here! We have to find it!”

  They search the entire unit, but there are no computers to be found. They look long and hard; they look everywhere. But two hours pass and their efforts yield nothing.

  Then he stops where he is and shakes his head. He’s mistaken. He’s gotten it wrong. But how can that be? Think! He goes back to the table and sits, trying to remember.

  Words surface, another piece of his submerged memories.

  Don’t ask me. I can’t tell you that.

  His father speaking. His father saying he won’t tell him the identity of the man behind what is happening. About his uncle. Too dangerous to do so.

  But he did tell him. Ash remembers now. Somehow he has forgotten until now. A memory suppressed by ProLx? Wait! Something else. Another fresh memory reaches out to him. A small but crucial scrap. The computer he searches for. One in which the locking codes will find and open a file . . .

  “Cay!” His urgent hiss brings her to him, and he pulls her close. “It’s not here! It never was!”

  “But didn’t you just say the exact opposite?” she demands. “What are you talking about? So it’s not in a computer?”

  “No, no! The computer isn’t here!” His excitement is so intense he can barely get the words out. “Remember what you said earlier about a misdirection? You were right. My father knew if my uncle found out about the file he would go looking for it. So he couldn’t risk hiding it here or in BioGen because he knew those were the first places his brother would look. So he chose somewhere else.”

  They stare at each other in the near dark, breathing hard. She grips his shoulders, fingers tightening. “What place?”

  “Just hear me out. You were right. Coming here, sitting at that table, and thinking about it really worked. My father giving me the locking codes and telling me he would suppress my memory of it. Of everything about what was happening except the warning. But when the warning came, I would remember again. When I remembered the codes, I assumed the computer where the file could be found was here, but I was mistaken.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Afraid so.”

  “So where is it?”

  For the first time since they arrived back at his home, he casts aside caution and speaks in his normal voice.

  “ORACLE Central. Hidden somewhere inside of Blue Skye.”

  - 27 -

  Blue Skye?” Jenny repeats incredulously, leaning forward the moment she hears Ash speak the words.

  With Cay, he has arrived at the safe house where Jenny and Woodrow have been waiting since yesterday, expecting to have a discussion that would help them find a way to break into BioGen. Hard enough to make that happen, but still far easier than breaking into ORACLE. Ash’s news has thrown everything into disarray.

  Jenny still can’t believe it. “Why in the world would your father use Blue Sky as a hiding place?”

  Blue Skye is the nickname for the dedicated server that acts as a backup central storage unit for files dispatched from all of the ORACLE divisions in the U.T. It is accessible only by ORACLE and no one else.

  “He probably thought it was the safest place to put it,” Ash answers. “Hide it right under his brother’s nose.”

  “He must have had a way to access it,” Cay adds. “It wouldn’t have been all that hard with the commander of ORACLE as his brother.”

  Jenny is barely listening. “But why not use BioGen’s computers? He had easy access there to almost anything. We would have access to almost anything too, once we knew where your father had hidden it. Housing his material in Blue Skye—where Cyrus has control of everything—seems a risky choice.”

  “Maybe not,” Woodrow interrupts. They all look at him. Woodrow hardly ever says anything. “Blue Skye is strictly regulated by the U.T. It’s a compartmentalized and segregated system. No one person has all the locking codes. That’s how Blue Skye was constructed. It was a precaution against a central hacking attempt. Only the person who opens each individual storage area can access it. Ash’s father couldn’t hide it in a safer place if he wanted to keep it out of his brother’s hands.”

  “And out of our hands too.” Jenny won’t let go. “How are we supposed to find where it’s hidden in a warren of millions of storage units? How are we supposed to get into ORACLE to access Blue Skye in the first place? Do you know how difficult that will be?”

  “Not that difficult,” Ash says. “My father gave me both the locking codes to the area where he hid everything and the security codes to ORACLE Central. We can walk right in, access the material, and walk right out.”

  He has told them about the operation his father performed on him and the beginning of his use of ProLx. He has come to terms with his father’s deception—not yet enough to be forgiving of it but enough to accept that his father must have thought it was the best way to preserve what he knew. Ash still feels like a test subject, experimented on and tweaked in the way his friends once were, made to be something he was totally unaware of and left to figure it out for himself. He does not like it one bit. He understands for the first time how they must feel.

  Cay had him wait until morning before having this meeting, giving him at least a few hours of sleep at her cottage. Ash was not sure he had slept at all, his newfound memories turning over in his mind, his emotions in turmoil. He was awake so early he was dressed before Cay appeared from her bedroom to see how he was doing. Breakfast had been a mostly silent affair, both of them too keyed up with expectations of what lay ahead.

  Now it is midday, and they sit in the tiny living room of the safe house, trying to work their way through Ash’s revelations and the prospects of what should be done because of them.

  “So you can get us inside ORACLE and open the Blue Skye unit your father created.” Jenny looks suddenly hopeful. “Even if it won’t be as easy as you make it sound.”

  Knowing smiles are shared all around. They see the light at the end of the tunnel they have been wandering through for weeks, and they are newly confident.

  “You really are a Street Freak now,” Woodrow says to Ash. “You only thought you weren’t.”

  Ash isn’t sure he qualifies, but he smiles back anyway. Close enough to count, he decides.

  “Not so fast.” Jenny is on her feet. “Everyone sit tight until I can determine if there is a way to break into Blue Skye without having to get inside ORACLE Central. It will save us a lot of trouble if there is. If not, we have to come up with a new plan.”

  She gets up and leaves the other three where they are, disappearing into the back room that houses her personal computer. She is in there long enough that by late afternoon they wonder

  if she is ever coming out again. Cay leaves without saying where she is going. Nothing new there. They pass the time watching the wall-mounted vidview for news of Cyrus and Street Freaks but find nothing. Whatever Ash’s uncle intends to do next, he is keeping it under wraps.

  It is growing dark when Jenny finally emerges. Her expression is haggard and frustrated; she looks defeated. “Nothing,” she says quietly. “I tried everything, but Blue Skye is a fortress. We have to access what we need at the source.”

  “So we have to get into ORACLE,” Ash says.

&nbs
p; Jenny nods. “But first I want to get my hands on floor plans and figure out where the Blue Skye mainframe is housed. That won’t be easy. And I’m too tired to do anything more tonight. Go on home. I’ll call when I have something.”

  Feeling weary and frustrated, Ash troops out the front door to wait for Cay and meets her coming up the walk. “Discussion over?” she asks him.

  “Jenny wants to get a copy of the floor plans for ORACLE so she can pinpoint the location of Blue Sky.”

  She turns around without a word, and they climb into the Bryson. For a moment, they just sit there, staring out at the night. “Your uncle is searching for you,” she says finally. “Jenny better not waste time.”

  He nods, not bothering to ask how she knows what his uncle is doing because he can already anticipate her response.

  “I hope we’re not making a mistake,” he says instead.

  “Why would we be?”

  He shrugs. “What if all this is pointless? Maybe whatever’s hidden in Blue Skye won’t change anything.”

  She gives him a hard look. “You don’t believe that. Your father was killed because of what he knew.”

  “But I’m risking the lives of everyone at Street Freaks by trying to find out.”

  Now she is really angry. “Everyone understands the risk, Ash, and no one wants to drop the matter. BioGen is experimenting on street kids and killing the ones on which the experiments don’t work out in the way they intended. All of us at Street Freaks fit that description. So we have a personal interest in seeing this through. I don’t know what we’ll find when we retrieve your father’s file. But your father thought it was worth something, so I think we can assume that whatever we find, it will have value.”

  They trade challenging looks, but Ash gives way first. “Okay. I still hate the idea of being the one who’s the cause of everything we’re about to do.”

  She smirks. “This isn’t as much about you as you seem to think it is. You coming to Street Freaks just happened to be the catalyst. But we’re all in agreement on what needs doing, in case you didn’t notice. No one opted out.” She reaches over and shoves him gently. Have a little faith in your friends, why don’t you?”

  He sighs. “Yeah, all right.”

  He smiles, and she smiles back. “Good for you. Now let’s get back to the cottage. I don’t know how long we’ll have to wait on Jenny. She’s thorough, but she’s slow.”

  “So you could end up with me as a permanent houseguest?”

  She glances over. “Can you cook?”

  He shakes his head. “No.”

  “Well, you better learn if you plan to stay.”

  She leaves it hanging, triggers the ignition, and they drive off into the darkness.

  Another night is spent at the cottage with Cay in her bedroom and Ash on the couch. He doesn’t know about her, but his sleep is restless. He is more than a little afraid of what lies ahead. He remembers how it felt going into ORACLE the last time. And that was through the front door and not by breaking in. He remembers the black-clads and the Watchmen and the strong, hard features of his uncle.

  He does not want to do this, but there is no avoiding it.

  They rise shortly after dawn and sit down to breakfast together. No words pass between them until the meal is nearly finished.

  “You have the codes memorized?” she asks suddenly. “You won’t forget them?”

  He nods.

  “I want you to stay close to me and do what I tell you. No questions, no arguments. Can you agree to that?”

  “I think so. Will it just be the two of us?”

  She nods. “Unless Jenny insists on coming. I can’t stop her if she does. But it’s dangerous for her with those tanks and tubes. She’s so vulnerable.”

  Unlike you, he thinks. Or me. We’re invincible.

  “Let me ask you something,” he says. “All these street kids who were tweaked by BioGen—what happened to them? Besides yourselves, what about the others? Were they all killed because they didn’t work out?”

  She leans back in her chair, shakes her head. “It’s more complicated than that. You have to understand. Some of us were created by BioGen scientists—like T.J. and me. Some, like Holly, Jenny, and Woodrow, were reassembled because their human bodies failed them in major ways. Others were tweaked simply to test out new ideas for improvements. Reinventing-the-wheel sorts of ideas. These were most of the street kids snatched up by BioGen and brought in to experiment on. They were test subjects for various tweaks the scientists had dreamed up for how we might improve the human race. Some were successful. Most weren’t.”

  “What were they doing this for? If all they were trying to do was reinvent the wheel, what prompted it?

  “Think of it this way. You can build the perfect anything, but you can’t always predict exactly how it will perform. Especially when it has a brain and the capacity for critical thinking and independent thought built into it. To get a better human, you have to provide both. Otherwise, you have an automaton, and they didn’t want that. Turns out none of us liked what had been done to us. None of us wanted to be what we were expected to be. So we became expendable.”

  “Like babies born to parents,” Ash says. “Parents have hopes and expectations for their kids, but you never know if they will be realized. Parents do what they can to shape their kids’ lives as they grow up, but they can easily turn out to be something else entirely.”

  “No solution to that problem. Doesn’t matter if you are flesh and blood or synthetic. If you can think and feel and comprehend the larger world, you can analyze and come to your own conclusions about who and what you want to be. T.J. was strong and brave and capable, but he didn’t want to be a soldier. Holly never got over what had been done to her by her parents. Jenny and Woodrow didn’t like how they were being used like machines.”

  “And you?” he presses.

  “I didn’t want to be someone’s sex toy. And that was a real problem not only because that was what I was created to be but also because I turned out perfectly otherwise. I was the ideal plaything for needy men. I just didn’t think that was all I was meant to be. Your father agreed.”

  “They would have killed you otherwise? BioGen would have?”

  “It was already in the works. Your father put a stop to it; he got me out and brought me to Street Freaks. He gave me a home and a sense of place in the world.”

  “How did he get you out? That must have been hard. Don’t they know where you are? Couldn’t they come and take you back?”

  She pauses a long time before she nods. “Yes, to everything, Ash. Now let’s leave it there, please. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

  She rises, goes into her bedroom, and closes the door, effectively ending the possibility of further discussion. Ash sits and worries and broods, his mind working through endless possibilities of how his father had managed to save her, and then he shifts his thinking to what comes next. He quickly grows tired of the exercise, but he keeps on anyway. Better to do something than nothing.

  The call from Jenny comes early in the afternoon. It surfaces on Cay’s private vidview while she is cleaning up lunch dishes. The discussion is short and private; Cay moves away from Ash as she talks in quiet tones. When she is finished, she comes back over and sits beside him on the couch.

  “Jenny has assembled a set of floor plans. Not from ORACLE. Those were classified and secured. She tracked them down using records stored in the files of the companies that did the plumbing and the electrical. It took awhile to hack in because those copies were secured as well, but she managed it. She was able to pinpoint where Blue Skye is located.”

  “When are we going in?” He feels eager, energized. They have something to do at last.

  “Tonight. But we’re going over to be with Jenny and Woodrow now. Grab your blackout gear and the stun gun. We’re leaving in thirty minutes. Remember what I told you earlier. Take your lead from me.”

  He is annoyed that she is being so insiste
nt on him doing what she tells him, but he guesses she is trying to protect him. After all, if he goes down, the whole effort collapses. They all have a lot riding on him. It is daunting.

  When they reach the safe house and enter an hour later, Ash is astonished find Holly Priest and Penny-Bird waiting for them.

  “Hey, Ash,” Holly greets him cheerfully. “You look all geared up and ready to go.”

  She sits on the sofa, her injured leg still wrapped in a regenerative bandage but now also protected by a steel-ribbed brace that allows for bending at the knee joint and not much else. She wears a blackout sheath and Forms, and she has strapped black armor about her torso. Various weapons are holstered at her waist.

  Penny-Bird wears a blackout sheath as well and carries her chopdown. When Jenny appears, she is similarly dressed.

  “No,” Cay says at once, looking from one to the other. “You’re not going, none of you.”

  “Not your call, Cay,” Holly says calmly, giving her a shrug. “We started this together. That’s the way we’re going to end it.”

  “Your leg was shot to pieces!”

  “Cyborgs heal faster than humans. Faster than synths too. You know that.”

  “You’ll have trouble moving.” Cay is not about to concede. “If we get trapped, you won’t be able to keep up with the rest of us. You’ll be caught and killed.”

  Jenny makes a dismissive gesture. “Save your breath. I already made every argument I could come up with, and she tossed them all aside. She intends to act as rearguard along with Penny. It will only be you and Ash and me going into the center that houses Blue Skye. She’ll just have to wait for us to get back to her.”

  Cay looks at Penny-Bird. “What are you? Fifteen or something?”

  “Oh, there’s an age limit for this sort of thing?” The girl snorts derisively. “Didn’t realize. You do know I raced in the Sprint, don’t you? That should count for something in the experience area. I can take care of myself.”

  “And don’t start on me,” Jenny added quickly. “I need to be there to help with the computers that will give us access to Blue Skye. I can’t do that from back here.”