Gathering Ashes (The Wonderland Cycle Book 3)
Page 20
Even now, he wished he could hate her more than he did then.
She smiled at him, that same nasty, condescending smile he remembered from before, terrifying in a special way even with his deadening. “Because I engineered you. I know how this is going to end. The science, the technology, all of it supports us.” The Mother paused to gesture the scientists away. “This isn’t a work of fiction. The power of human will isn’t going to save you, because human beings have no will, only chemicals. Perhaps it may well be the same for us, living creatures that we are, but we are winning.”
He remembered well the defeat that logic threatened to lay upon him then. In that moment, he may very well have just given up and allowed whatever process she had anticipated to take over. And then memory kicked in, memory not yet programmed, and his dream-self did something that surprised even himself: he smiled.
“Perhaps you might,” she said. “Or perhaps you place too much stock in humanity. Either way, it does not matter. We will succeed whatever you do.” She turned to go, the halo of alien words turning faithfully between her shoulders like a wheel of nightmares, but he sensed in her departure the slightest of flaws, a tiny, hairline crack in her diamond-hard confidence. Something was wrong, or his words had slipped through her armor. She wasn’t completely flawless, after all.
And thus his campaign to escape the Yathi began the night they resurrected him.
The dream faded, and in its place came the data of what he had been transformed into. No schematics floated through his brain, no technical jargon like there might have been in some heroic piece of holographic cinema. No explanation as to how. He simply knew how strong he was. How fast he was. How to manipulate his extraordinarily resilient body to the full extent to which it the Yathi had designed it. He already knew he could influence machines, but now the process of doing so became open to him. He understood how to activate the plasma envelopes over his arms, and that they could reach a temperature of several thousand degrees Kelvin– but more important than that, he knew the energy reserves placed within him were finite, but rechargeable. How long that power would last, however, remained a mystery.
In a way, it became a body he had grown into, the knowledge of his capabilities as well as limitations came on like instinct, but lacked any sense of scale. A strange way to design a body. He rose from the gurney to which Strikeboy had strapped him while pumping code into him over the last four hours via wireless connection. So much like a human being, but without any real humanity connected to it. On the other hand, it was rather an effective way to ease a nonhuman thing into its new life.
“H-hey.” He peered at Walken, eyes wide with surprise and fear, from behind a nest of computer equipment. “Are you all right?”
Struck by the hacker’s tone, Walken realized he had shrugged off the straps as if they were made of paper. “Yes. I’m sorry. I’m fine. Please contact Stadil and tell him I need to talk to him. I have what Lionel meant to send to me.” He felt better now than he remembered feeling in years. He had knowledge, he had power, he had purpose. He had a cause.
And, most important of all, he had a target.
hree hours into her run against Lionel’s systems, it became clear that the doctor had way more resources than Bobbi had ever expected.
Tenleytown had possessed its own network setup since it had been established, a warren of pirate systems and personal servers all glued together much like the settlement itself, a tangle of poorly-documented network addresses and digital back alleys with systems that seemed innocuous but were anything but. Once, when she had just started as a datanaut, she cruised a box located in a little market stall, looking to score some bootleg holographic games. She ended up running smack into a modified version of Melter-Seven that nearly killed her. Though she survived, the resultant nerve feedback paralyzed her legs for two days.
So she had taken her time setting up, spinning into being customized software designed to burn through whatever defenses might be protecting Lionel’s network presence. She did not believe it would be easy, even for the Yathi protocols that Cagliostro installed in her implants. If Lionel had somehow managed to unlock the secrets of the Princess Doll’s biocomputer modules, the possibility existed that customized software could have been derived from their programming. So, expecting the worst, she took her time. As it turned out, her judgment proved sound.
Though Lionel’s clinic stood out in plain sight, its servers were something else. The tangle of the Tenleytown network created a Sargasso even Bobbi had problems navigating, especially since its once-familiar structure had expanded exponentially in the last few years. Every new stall and tramp refinery added new data clusters, and though their identities could not hide from Bobbi’s empowered implants, it still felt like navigating a forest full of doors. Eventually, Bobbi found the clinic servers behind the guises of twenty-three completely innocuous addresses. She had no idea where Lionel had found his operators, but whoever they were, concealing the system as well as they did was no mean feat. Even having identified the servers, it took some time to try and piece together their relationships. Data appeared to be shared; files existed as independent fragments of encrypted data brought together only when needed. An impressive method, Bobbi had to admit. Impressive, and unexpected. More importantly, though the technique appeared devised along human lines, she found something familiar about the data fabric she could not put her finger on. By the time she tracked down the core server of Lionel’s network, however, her analysis of sample data made it all clear.
Though the code was mundane, techniques used in its construction utilized the Yathi-built, telepathic stratum of the Network.
Bobbi’s consciousness floated at the boundary of the core server, beholding it in the warm current of the network. In her mind’s eye, the system appeared like a pillar of black glass, so tightly woven was the security fabric around it. Because she could perceive it as such, she knew the programming held more than a simple appropriation of structure, but what? Reaching out with tendrils of analytical code, she brushed the face of the server…and met resistance, something no non-Yathi system had offered her in four years.
Her lips set in a frown as she worked subtle penetration against the curious system. She wielded a velvet razor, easily sharp enough to cut through the code fabric, but done in increments so slow the system would need to be incredibly sensitive to perceive. She knew Marcus’s people would be expecting her to hack the place. Or at least they should, if they had any brains about them. But she wouldn’t be obvious about it. Bobbi had a policy about making sure people had to work to get their expectations satisfied. But what about this system? How the hell was it possible for someone to mimic Yathi code structure while using mundane programming?
Bobbi imagined that if the Doll had been intact enough for him to access, if Lionel could crack its degrading systems and download some degree of data from them, it might in fact be possible for him to learn something from it. But this? She had no idea he had any kind of skill as a programmer, much less badass enough to adapt Yathi code for his own purposes. While the slow blade of her programming eased itself through the fabric of the security software, Bobbi analyzed this hybrid code and waited for the glass to part.
Analysis ate the lion’s sh
are of time; cutting the system’s defenses turned out to be simple once it finished. The setup proved sufficient to blunt the work of all but the best sort of mundane datanauts, but any Yathi operator would go through it like butter. If anything, the inclusion of Yathi file structure would be a sure sign to anyone with a clue that they meddled with things that would surely get them killed. So it wasn’t amateur hour. Bobbi slipped through the server’s defenses and probed its interior. But it sure as hell wasn’t ready for prime time. More than enough to get them in trouble. Again, the inherent weaknesses of their cause surfaced in her mind. Too many personalities, too many people upon which the whole damned thing counted. Probably the only reason Lionel remained alive at all was because he had buried himself so deeply.
Three hours into the run, Bobbi quietly accessed Lionel’s servers, copied terabytes of information, the whole data store, and left. No sooner had she withdrawn from the system’s black mirror skin did the presence of something else, or rather someone else, pushed at her. For a second, she nearly blew her cover by throwing up a battery of defense programs, but she realized the sensation came not from there in the network but from the faraway realm of the flesh. Someone shook her.
With a pang of mingled irritation and regret, Bobbi drew her consciousness up the well of the network and returned to her body. Upon opening her eyes, she stared up into Violet’s frowning face. “Jesus, Vi. What’s going on?”
“It’s Syme,” Violet said, her tone questioning, and Bobbi remembered she had told them she would only be two hours at most. “He wants to talk to you. The hotline.”
“Okay.” Bobbi nodded. “I’m all right. Let me see what he wants.”
Bobbi willed the office computer to activate, filling the room with panels of soft holographic light. One of them grew large and filled with Syme’s image, the handsome face set with serious lines, resplendent and bright against the shadows of the room. He stood in some kind of concrete booth, dressed the same as when she saw him before.
“Hey there, man,” she said as Violet went and started up the coffeemaker in the corner. “That was pretty quick. Didn’t expect you for ages.”
“I’ve been busy.” His dark eyes tracked hers through the connection. “So have you, I would imagine.”
Bobbi lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “I’m always busy, man, you know me. Something the matter?”
“Not immediately,” he said. “I take it you’ve been through his systems already?”
“I wouldn’t want you to think I’ve slowed down,” Bobbi said. “It’s a neat trick, that hybrid programming going on over there, but I think it’s doing more harm than good.”
Syme’s brows lifted. “So you have been in the system. “That’s…unsurprising, I suppose. What do you think of his defenses?”
“I think whoever put it together is real smart, and that armor’s gonna fuck up most anyone human trying to get in. But come on, Syme. You know as well as I do that if one of those people hit it up, they’re gonna see what’s been done and they’re gonna sweep him. Only reason someone hasn’t come across it yet is what a maze the Tenleytown net is.”
He nodded. “That’s what I was afraid of.” Syme’s face darkened. “Damn it.”
Bobbi canted her head. “Hey, look. Who the fuck is their programmer, anyway? Can’t be Lionel that put that together, right?”
Syme’s face grew stormy, and his eyes tracked the floor. “Look. I think it’s best that I level with you, Bobbi.”
Bobbi crossed her arms over her chest. “All right. “Hit me.”
Syme’s shoulders slumped a bit. “You know I said that we haven’t been dealing with Cagliostro.”
“Right.”
“Well, there’s a reason for that.”
Bobbi arched a slender brow. “There usually is, I find.”
“Can I get this out, or what?”
“No, please, go ahead.” Bobbi spread her hands. “Don’t mind me.”
“All right.” Syme shook his head, and his shoulders went slack in the way of a man releasing a great burden. “About a year ago, we were tracking down this milkblood, not on our list, but she looked important. Met up with Cagliostro, and he hadn’t heard of her either – so we decided to undertake long term surveillance.”
Bobbi squinted at him. “All right. Who was this?”
“Woman name of Bai Lu Zheng, construction magnate out of China. Bridges, high-rises, that kind of thing. We wouldn’t have known about her if it weren’t for one of our guys in Phuket…”
“Wait, you have guys in Phuket?” Bobbi’s other brow joined its fellow.
Syme managed a faint smirk. “Phuket, even Bangkok. We were better along than maybe you thought. But anyway. So our guy saw her operating with Wilson Takamatsu, one of their top engineers out East, you remember him. He actually managed to catch them talking to each other in the Yathi language. We ran it through the translation matrix, figured out that they were referring to about some big facility they had in the upper levels of the Layer Cake.”
“The what?”
“Sorry. Bangkok, you know, the tiers.”
Bangkok was a city made of huge urban platters now, a giant evil model of its namesake. “Right, I got you now.”
“So, we cross-referenced what we had with what Cagliostro knew, and sure enough, that bitch was one of the ruling circle, the colonial authority.”
Bobbi let out a low whistle. “I can see why you’d pull out all the stops. Christ. We’ve never had a shot at one of those.”
“Because they never see the light of day, man, that’s why. So she shows up, then disappears. We never see her in Phuket again. But by then we’re hungry for her, and we’re stalking her. Two months later, she comes up in Shanghai, and we drop everything to take her out.”
She thought she knew how this was going to play out. “So you got your team together, and rode on out.”
“Not me specifically,” he said. “But yeah, we sent a big team out there. Never one for subtlety. We imagined she’d have a lot of guards, you know. Tracked her down to a hotel off the harbor, Nanhai Palace. Well, she was waiting on them. There weren’t any guards, nothing. They just broke in and there she was, sitting on the corner of her bed in her suite, smoking a Chaplain like nothing was wrong in the world.”
“Waiting on them. She definitely saw that coming. And they had no chance.”
Syme took a deep breath. He had the look of a slowly deflating balloon, all that mystery vanishing beneath the sheer weight of bad experiences. “Yeah. They opened up on her with thermite needle guns, explosive rounds, everything. They had a heavy guy with them, this Ghanaian named Adarkwa, borged up almost entirely. Old PMC crusher. He went after her with a pair of striker arms, able to punch holes in tank armor. Punched her square in the face, she didn’t even move.”
“Jesus,” Bobbi muttered.
“Then she got up, put her hand straight through his chest. Like she was just reaching across the dinner table. Compared to that, nobody else had a chance. She killed them all as far as we know. Video feed went out before she finished everybody, but we haven’t heard from anyone involved.”
She’d heard a lot of those stories in the last four years, many of which she had experienced firsthand. “That guy, Tanaka. He said Scalli told his people I killed folks like a spider. Well, this is why.”
“Well, in the end, you definitely appear to have been the wiser.”
“Oh?”
“Look, before I tell you anymore, I need to ask you something.” His eyes gleamed like hard flints, lovingly rendered in the glow of the holographic projector.
A frown settled onto Bobbi’s lips. “All right.”
“I need to know. You and your people, you’re still fighting the fight, are you not?”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Bobbi’s frown deepened. “Of course we are. What do you think we are?”
“Scalli used to say…”
“Oh, fuck what Scalli used to say!” She was shouting before
she knew it, stabbing a finger in the air between herself and Syme’s image. “This whole fucking split was bullshit from the start. When did I ever give anyone a reason to think that I wasn’t human? You fought alongside me, you know I never did anything to endanger you. I didn’t believe in combat heroics, just in and out, get the job done. The stakes are too fucking high for this partisan bullshit!”
“I agree!” He raised his hands, and Bobbi heard her fury ringing in her ears. “I agree. That’s why I want to come back in.”
The anger that seethed inside of her vanished. Bobbi stared at him for a stretch, stunned. “You want to come back in… What do you mean?”
“I mean I want to join back up with you.” Syme pursed his lips. “Me, Mark, some others. Everybody under my command. We’ve been talking about it since we met you at Lionel’s clinic.”
“So I see,” Bobbi said, still quite out of her depth. She’d always hoped for a reunion to some extent or another, but she’d never actually expected it to happen. She’d grown used to people taking off, not the reverse. “All right. I’ll set up a meeting for you and me. Somewhere in the city―”
“No,” he barked, before recovering. “I’m sorry. I want to meet at your headquarters.”
“Not gonna happen.” She didn’t leave room to argue. “I don’t see you for two years, and then when I do you’ve got a gun drawn. Two days later, you want to come back in? I’m sorry, man, I mean it’s great you want to get the band back together and all, but we do this my way if it happens. That means you and I meet at a remote location. Take it slow.”
The look on Syme’s face made her think of the stone gargoyles that hung from the old cathedrals, but he nodded anyway. “Fine. Fine. You’ll contact me with the where and when?”