Code Breakers: Beta

by Colin F. Barnes

Gabe ran down the ramp, his arms waving out from his Red Widow robes. “Watch out!” he shouted before tackling Gerry to the ground. A laser pistol shot crashed into the rear bulkhead of the transporter, the heat searing the air around it.

  Turning around onto his back, Gerry saw Jachz aim a pistol at him.

  “I’m sorry, Gerry. I truly thought we could have been friends, but I had strict orders.”

  He pulled the trigger.

  ***

  The pain never came. Jachz’s body stiffened before falling face-first into the Polymar™ floor with a heavy crack. His laser pistol clattered to his ground.

  Standing in a cloud of dust, wearing a long synthetic leather coat over his Black Sabbath t-shirt, Kaden stood with a wide grin on his face. His eyes were wide like dishes and his pupils were almost entirely dilated.

  “Kaden, what the hell?” Gerry stood, moved over to the catatonic kid.

  “They took her,” he said, his voice monotone and flat.

  “Your mother?”

  Kaden nodded. “Left me behind.”

  “Come with us,” Gerry said. “We could use some extra help.”

  The kid looked up at Gerry, his lips twitched at the edges as though he had just been told a joke. For a second he looked like a feral hyena. “I’m afraid I can’t do that,” he said while scratching his right wrist with his free left hand.

  Gerry noticed he had chipped himself crudely with one of the hot-chips. He remembered Steven then. “Did you deliver the chip to my friend okay?”

  Kaden laughed hysterically then. His whole body seemed to twitch and fidget as though his muscles were being electrocuted. “Yeah, I saw him.”

  “Was he okay?” Gerry asked, stepping back away from the kid, not liking the vibes that were coming from him.

  “He’s dead now.”

  For a brief moment, Gerry noticed a rush of data emanate from the kid on the City Earth network. He wasn’t connected by his AIA anymore due to the chip, but the code flowed from him to a server or computer network elsewhere. Gerry tried to track it, but was rebuffed immediately, his AIA almost crashing with the attack.

  Before he could respond further, the kid raised the pistol, fired two shots at point blank range.

  The first blinded Gerry as it struck him full in the face, snapping his head back with a vicious jolt. The hot laser burned his flesh and nerves instantly. He collapsed to his knees, tried to scream, but nothing worked. No voice, just the terrible burning. The second shot hit him in the chest, searing through his rib cage and vaporising his heart.

  His mind reeled from the pain and the shock, and as the darkness came to envelope him, all he could conjure in his mind was the image of a man in shadow, wrapped in moving, swirling code looking at him from across some unexplored network. And then as his brain died from the lack of blood and oxygen, there was nothing.

  Chapter 31

  Petal recoiled out of the private connection with Gerry as a huge dump of data crashed into her cortex. She removed herself from the Alpha server, leaving its routines to continue to map out The Family’s station system. For a brief second her ears rang with a scream full of anguish and rage. It was Gabe.

  Petal jumped from her seat, dashed down the ramp. Gabe leaned over the slumped figure of Gerry. Huddled over his chest, Gabe shook and screamed; his cries made the blood in her veins freeze.

  A kid stood over them, his face impassive. He held a pistol in his right hand, steam rising from its barrel. She seemed to take everything in at the smallest possible detail and then she was moving, barely without even realising.

  She soon closed the distance to the kid who looked up slowly, a sly expression on his face. She was running too fast, and he stumbled back, tried to raise his arm.

  Petal was on him before he could act. Her combat spikes fully extended, and with a single movement, she swung them up in a long arc, piercing through the bottom of his jaw and driving one through his throat, breaking bones and severing tissue as the force carried all the way through his brain and finally out the top of his skull.

  It made a squelching sound as she pulled the spike free, and while screaming at the top of her voice, tears obscuring her vision, thrust into him again, up through his chest cavity and out between his shoulders.

  His limp body danced and jittered like a puppet as she continued to pierce and splice his body, all the while letting her anger out in a terrible howl like a pained dog.

  How long she stabbed at Gerry’s killer she couldn’t tell. Violence and death were the only things she could cope with. Eventually, as fatigue slowed her, a pair of hands gripped her shoulders and pulled her away from the mutilated pile of meat on the ground.

  When Petal finally opened her eyes, she and Gabe, along with Enna, Robertson and Sasha were stood around the charred, lifeless body of Gerry.

  She wanted to take her own life there and then, such was the pain of losing him and the shock of it happening so quickly. A thousand questions came to her: who was the kid? Why had he done this? How could Gerry be dead? Killed at the hands of some bastard kid after everything Gerry had done and achieved. It couldn’t be right.

  The others looked at her with blank expressions, their eyes filled with a hollow sadness.

  “Why?” Petal finally said, her quiet, rasping words snatched by the sound of shuttles leaving the city. It sounded obscene, like she had sworn in a mausoleum. She turned away from Gerry’s lifeless shell, watched the last evacuation ship leave City Earth. The remaining security forces were running towards the western edge. No doubt to reinforce the security ring staffed by the NearlyMen.

  It’s over, she thought. Without Gerry coordinating, inspiring, and being that driving force, they couldn’t galvanise against Red Widow’s numbers. City Earth was abandoned, and it was only a matter of time before the Red Widows took it. And worse, the man she spent so long waiting to be reunited with was dead. For so long she hadn’t known whether he reciprocated her feelings, and that joy of when she heard his voice again was unlike anything she’d experienced before, even trumping finding Sasha and Robertson.

  And now he was gone.

  All hope died with Gerry, both humankind’s and hers. Deep down, she seethed. A furious anger bubbled like a molten core, threatened to explode. She thought about what to do next. A single idea came to her: fight. Leave the safety of the transporter, leave what was left behind, and join the ranks in the battlefield out there on the abandoned lands, and give her blood to the soil, taking as many of those barbaric fanatics as possible.

  She stood, turned to the others, and was about to speak when she saw Gabe kneeling beside Gerry, a cable from his neck port connected to Gerry’s.

  “What are you doing?” she said, suddenly outraged at the violation of Gerry’s remains.

  Gabe looked up at her, at a hint of that roguish smile on his full lips.

  “He ain’t dead yet, girl. Ya gonna save him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “His brain!” Gabe said. “It still holds his mind.”

  A flush of hope coursed through her, made her skin tingle. She thought she knew what her old friend was suggesting. She knelt down beside Gerry’s head, opposite Gabe.

  “He’s part AI, right?” Gabe said. “Which means—”

  “I can download him? Save his mind?”

  Gabe nodded his head, making the cable slap against the dead flesh of Gerry’s body.

  Doctor Robertson interjected, “This is what I programmed you for,” the Doc said. “Amongst other things. Although Gerry is far more advanced than any AI you’ve contained before, with your upgrades I believe you’d have the capacity to do this. And with Alpha and Omega finally reunited, we have the perfect destination for him. We need to re-couple them.”

  Sasha looked from Robertson to Petal, the wrinkles on her forehead ridged and deep. “But what if? I mean... we just met.” She turned away then, her face red.

  Petal got the gist of her meaning. The pair of them, sisters, had only reunited
a few days ago, and this task could potentially kill Petal, taking away Sasha’s only surviving sibling. It was a risk worth taking, however, if it meant preserving Gerry’s mind.

  Callous, she thought, but it was true. She’d only known Sasha for a few days, was still getting used to the idea of a sister, but Gerry, well, he was special to her.

  “How are we on hacking The Family’s weaponry protocols?” Petal asked, trying to focus her mind on the practical. If she were going to do this, take Gerry’s very being into herself, she wanted to make sure everything was ready.

  Robertson checked the display on his slate, which was connected to Omega, waited a few seconds, and finally said. “We’ve found the source, should have the encryption cracked within ten minutes or so.”

  “Good. By the time I’ve downloaded Gerry, Alpha and Omega should be free from any other tasks, yes?”

  “Yes,” Robertson said after checking his slate again. “Kind of.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, they’re not completely reconnected yet. Alpha is doing her thing with the cracking of The Family’s security on one core, and the other is trying to network with Omega, but there seems to be some kind of communication hitch.”

  “What kind of hitch? Can you fix it? I thought they were made to work together?”

  “They were,” Robertson said. “But there appears to be some code within Omega that’s preventing the coupling. Something’s corrupted, buggy.”

  “Is this something you can fix quickly?” Petal asked, feeling the heavy weight of dread settling in her guts.

  Robertson took a breath like an inward sigh and his eyebrows knitted together. “I’m trying. I’m really trying.”

  “Well, that’s your challenge right there, Doc. I’ll download Gerry, if I can. You get those servers sorted and ready to receive him, because if not, we’re all screwed liked none of us have been screwed before.”

  “Once I’ve got ya started,” Gabe said. “I’ll give the Doc a hand, see if I can help get ‘em back together.”

  “Thanks, Gabe.”

  “Don’t thank me yet, girl. Let’s see if ya can get Gerry safe first.”

  Robertson walked over, placed a hand on Petal’s shoulder, and looked down at her with kindness. Could she detect an expression of fatherly love? She couldn’t be sure, but his voice was thick with concern. “Are you absolutely sure you want to do this? The results could be fatal for you both.”

  “I’d rather die trying than live without him,” Petal said, meaning every word.

  “Okay then. It looks like we all have our jobs to do.”

  Gabe disconnected the cable between Gerry and himself and handed it to Petal.

  “His mind is strong. Be careful.”

  Petal took the cable, watched as it shook in her trembling hand. She lifted it to her own neck port, felt the buzz and the current of electricity as she brought it up and connected it to the metal sleeve. She closed her eyes and socketed it inside completely.

  In her mind she saw it: Gerry and his AIA as one, a trillion pathways stretching out far as she could see. And in the middle of it all, a bright round light pulsating and growing larger. It was unlike any AI she had experienced before. There were no code segments here. No blocks of logic, no code commenting, just this otherworldly creation of man and computation.

  Mixed in with the awe and majesty, a terrible thought nagged at her: how could she hold such a thing? Despite her concern it seemed to recognise her, this dual identity, this amazing piece of life and engineering entwined as one.

  The pulsating light moved towards her and she felt the overpowering immensity of it and panicked as data started to flow into her. It started as a trickle to begin with. Bits and bytes of information that she knew was Gerry, or at least tiny fragments of him. It had his signature, his feel. And then the flow increased, became a torrent that brought pain with it.

  Petal screamed until her voice broke. She knew her body must have twisted into painful shapes as she fought to hold on to her own mind while this other thing consumed her, rushed into her.

  It kept on coming, endless waves of increasingly more complex data structures. It overwhelmed her to the point where she didn’t know who she was, or what she was. All that mattered was that she must remain conscious, the reasons now unclear to her, but it seemed so very important.

  With one last transfer, her mind fragmented into a series of pockets.

  A cold touch crept up the back of her head. Numerous hands grabbed at her body. She couldn’t process what was happening. All she could see was blackness. She had no control anymore. Her mind had compartmentalised her into a dark corner and she was now just a passenger.

  ***

  Ten minutes had passed. Sasha sat with her arms clutched around her stomach. She tapped her foot, knocking out a frantic, nervous rhythm. Jimmy Robertson stood behind her, one hand gripped a little too tightly on her shoulder, his other hand rapping against the back of the seat.

  Cheska, Jess, and Enna huddled together, waited like three wise women. Gabe remained kneeling next to Gerry, and now Petal’s, prone still bodies. She didn’t move much beyond a twitch of her fingers, or a tremble through her leg.

  Her eyes, however, flickered beneath her lids, as if she were in deep REM sleep.

  Sasha sprung up from her chair, breaking Robertson’s grip in her shoulder. She paced up and down the transporter, each step echoing around the plane. The sound and movement brought her little comfort. The tension remained.

  “How will we know?” she finally said, breaking the silence, and feeling like she’d shattered some reverent rule.

  Everyone turned to look at her, their faces a mixture of annoyance, fear, and trepidation. All but Jess whose expression was one of wide-eyed wonder. She stared at Petal and Gerry and appeared to be hypnotised by something.

  Gabe spoke first, his words thick with that strange, melodic accent of his. “Usually, it takes a few minutes, then she’s up and about. Sometimes it takes a ‘Stem shot, but we ain’t gonna need that no more, so I guess we wait. Gerry’s a little more complex than ya average AI.”

  It was of no comfort.

  Sasha sat back down, tried to focus on the events as they’d unfolded. And wished she hadn’t. For a brief few moments during Gerry talking with the ambassador and subsequently being shot, she’d forgotten about Vickers and his men.

  Although she was never very close to him, like Jimmy, he’d been an informative part of her maturation. He’d instilled in her a fighter’s discipline, focus, and strength. For all his faults, deep down he was one of the good guys, and it left her feeling hollow to know that so soon from coming to the surface he’d been taken away.

  That it was at the hands of the android combat units hurt even more.

  She was the one who had helped push in favour of their use. If she’d only listened to Robertson, backed him up, this wouldn’t have happened. Instead, here they were, a motley group of people stuck inside a dome while the Red Widows, with the androids, marched on their position.

  It’ll be a bloodbath, she thought.

  “Hey, she’s finished!” Robertson rushed to Alpha and Omega, knelt in front of them, his slate in hand, almost as if he were bowed in prayer to some ancient deity. After gesturing wildly across the surface, he turned back to the others with a smile on his face.

  “What’s happened?” Sasha asked.

  “It’s Alpha,” Robertson said. “She’s cracked The Family’s security, but there’s something else.”

  Gabe stood, turned to Robertson, “What is it, man?”

  An icy chill made Sasha shiver. Gooseflesh rippled her exposed arms. Jimmy Robertson stammered, rubbed his hand across his forehead. “There’s something blocking access.”

  “What? What is it?” Sasha said, unable to stand the tension anymore.

  “I don’t know,” Robertson said before sighing and dropping his shoulders in defeat.

  “Could it be a virus?” Gabe said. “P’raps Th
e Family allowed Alpha in with the thought of infecting her. If they wanna destroy everything down here, who’s to say they don’t want to also destroy the servers?”

  “Whatever it is, it’s spiking the servers CPUs to ninety percent capacity.”

  “That’s a crap-load of power,” Sasha said, unable to control herself. “And you want to put Gerry in there with it? What if Gabe’s right? What if it’s a virus? With Gerry’s mind and the power of the servers, who knows what could happen?”

  “What option do we have?” Robertson said. “We’d lose both Gerry and Petal if we didn’t download him. Petal can’t hold him indefinitely. She doesn’t have that kind of capacity.”

  “I think I’ll be the judge of that.”

  “Petal?” Sasha spun round, rushed past Gabe and Jimmy, negotiated her way through the rows of seats, and hugged Petal so tightly her sister coughed.

  “Easy, Sis,” Petal said, her words coming in weak, breathy fragments.

  Sasha eased her grip, but didn’t let go. “Did it work? Did you get him okay?”

  “I think so. It’s hard to tell right now. I’ve never experienced anything like this.”

  “What does it feel like?”

  “I can’t describe it.”

  “Are you hurt?”

  Petal simply closed her eyes, nodded.

  “Enna, Jimmy? Is there anything you could do for her?” Sasha said, holding Petal more gently now as if she were a newborn baby.

  Robertson placed his slate on top of the humming server, and Enna rose from her seat, which was surrounded by Cheska and Jess. The latter still looked wide-eyed with wonder, mesmerised by what was going on. She’d barely said a word throughout all of this, and Sasha wondered if she wasn’t traumatised by everything that had happened. But then something caught Jess’s attention. She looked over at Alpha and Omega. She slid herself off her seat, crossed her tiny, deformed legs beneath her body, and using her arms slid herself down the aisle to where the two servers were sat next to each other in a wide, open part of the transporter. Sasha moved towards the girl, watched as she reached out her arms to touch the two servers.