“Damn it. You’re right, Gabe.” Petal frantically gestured across her HackSlate, shaking her head. “That other demon AI’s all over the place, piggybacking on our Meshwork to attack City Earth’s defences, which, now you and your pal Mike are out of the game, are severely weakened.”
“But Jasper is from the Family,” Gerry said. “Why would he sabotage the very city that belongs to him and his kind? It doesn’t make any sense. The guy is on the inside. If he wanted to get to Kuznetski, he’d just do it himself or use one of his relations. They rule this place. They don’t need to resort to all this nonsense just to get rid of the president.”
Gabe smiled. “So what does that tell ya, man?”
Gerry tried to think. As expected, his reliance on Mags, his AIA, had slowed his analytical thinking. He was tired, weak, and just couldn’t think. “I don’t know!” He kicked out at the woman on the floor. “This ain’t me—I don’t know all this stuff. I’m just a regular guy who’s been screwed over.” He wanted to explode. The frustration built in his head so that he thought he’d completely lose the plot, but then, like a supernova, the answer came to him.
“Jasper isn’t from the Family! Holy crap. He’s the insider… the hacker. He’s the swine that put the demon AI into Mike… and me. He must have been working with her.” Gerry nudged the woman again with a toe, fully expecting her to jump at the revelation.
“I think ya right, man. It’s logical. Enna could probably shed some light on this.”
“Enna?”
“Someone who hires us,” Petal said. “She gives us contracts, deals in information. She’ll pay big for this.” Her toothy grin was back, not from the situation but from the results of a NanoStem injection. The syringe stuck out of a raised vein on her forearm.
“Don’t look so freaked out, Gez. Think of this as medicine, yeah? I need it to help hold all this stuff in… I’ve a weak immune system; hence why we should get you geared up pronto. Talking of which, Gez, come here.”
Gerry stepped towards Petal, and that’s all he remembered.
***
A jabbing pain in his neck woke Gerry up. Touching it, he felt something cold and hard. Something made from metal. “What the hell?”
“It’s just a connection port, man,” Gabe said. “Ya’ll need it outside of the City. We had to put ya under. It can be messy.”
Gabriel was right. Next to Gerry’s foot lay a crimson pool. When he inspected his hand, spots of blood covered his fingertips. “It hurts like hell. Was this entirely necessary?” Gerry leant over and waited for a wave of nausea to pass. Neck ports weren’t unheard of. City Earth citizens had them up to a few years ago when they were outlawed due to the new all-encompassing wireless network.
Petal slapped him on the butt. “We’ve got work to do.”
Gerry sat back down on the plastic seat inside the train carriage and admired his new leather duster jacket and strong boots. The gun belt made carrying the revolver easier.
He was concerned about the numbness in his neck. Gabe gave him a shot of NanoStem to ease the pain, and he could understand Petal’s previous expression. It was delicious. Like being carried on wings of air. It felt almost as if he were sleepwalking with all his faculties turned up to max. It even felt like he had use of Mags again. Thoughts processed so quickly he couldn’t get a handle on them. Knew that eventually all that computation, all that analysis of the day’s events would deliver a result and unravel the mystery of who Jasper was, or working for, and who was behind the malicious AI apparently gunning for Miralam Kuznetski.
“Okay, Gez,” Petal said. “I want you to access your dermal implant and enter this code: oh-forty-seven-hash-three-hash-one-nine-fifty-eight-colon-six. That’ll connect you to our short-range, virtual private network. Our VPN. Once the NanoStem wears off and you can fully interact with your neck port, we’ll be able to communicate securely and send data to each other. Where we’re going, we’re gonna need it: it’s a dangerous place out there in… the abandoned lands.”
“Sure. No problem. I got it.” Without thinking he did as he was told, and he felt a slight buzz of electricity in his dermal implant.
Petal was saying something again. Her voice lilted and floated as if it were some far-off song from an audio system. He knew what she was saying was important and useful, but he just let the words flow through his brain, socket themselves into places that he’d recover later. For now, he was just pleased to be numb—to let the grief and heartache melt away like ice on a summer’s day.
His eyelids grew too heavy to resist. Leaning back, he gave in to the drugs and conjured memories of his two girls: they grew faint and indistinct, and the last thought he had before sleeping was that he couldn’t remember exactly what they looked like.
Chapter 6
The clacking and whirring of the train penetrated Gerry’s subconscious. The depth of his sleep became thin, like NanoSheets: parts of the real world transforming the cadre of diaphanous thoughts that ran through his mind.
The steady rhythm from outside melded with his frantic cogitations until, within his mind, all he saw was a stream of code. At first he couldn’t make sense of the programmes—being made up with the symbols and characters from the old C language—but then, like a student of foreign languages, who, being thrown into the deep end with fluent speakers, soon started to understand: rhythms, grammar, syntax, logic, loops, statements, call-backs, variables, constants, objects… so much data—so much possibility.
The train screeched to a halt.
Gerry snapped his eyes open with a start, sucked in a breath, and gripped the handrail as if he were falling off a cliff.
Ahead of him bright light reduced his pupils to dust specks. The aurora of white light encompassed everything, so that for a minute, Gerry thought he was dead.
No one spoke. All around him, more blinding light… but there, in front of him in the next row, a head… dreadlocks.
“Gabriel. Is that you?” His voice felt small, shaky, like a boy’s.
The head turned.
Gabe’s voice was hushed, filled with tension. “Quiet, Gez, we’re approaching the toll. Let us handle this. You stay where you are, okay?”
A hand, cool and clammy, circled his forearm. Her grip delicate, like his grandmother’s on her deathbed. The image struck Gerry like a bullet, and it was all he could do to choke down the welling up of emotion. A simple touch shouldn’t be able to bring so much pain. He thought of his grandmother in her hospice: withered and grey. Her skin gone translucent so that her slow veins showed through like blue string. He, his wife, and his father sat around her—waiting. Her touch was the last thing she gave him.
A tear fell down Gerry’s cheek. It reached halfway before another soft, caring hand wiped it away.
Petal slipped across the plastic seat until her warmth radiated into his leg and ribs.
“It’s okay, Gerry. I understand. You get used to it. You’ll forget. Well, in my case the memories faded for other reasons. S’all part of the job. You’ll get through it, Gez. I promise.”
The train came to a full stop. Its motors whined down, and the doors slid open with a whoosh of air.
Petal gave his arm a quick squeeze before standing up. “We’ll be right back. Let us scope it out first. We ain’t in Paradise anymore. They’ll ‘love’ the likes of you. All fresh and innocent.”
“Who will?”
Petal gave him a quirky, side-lilting smile and flipped over her mirrored lenses on her goggles. “The natives… let’s just say they’re a little eager.”
At her wild expression and hint of what might be out there, Gerry pulled the gun from the bag and took comfort from its entirely mechanical coldness.
“That’s m’boy. You shoot like hell if anything… weird comes your way, you hear?”
“Wait, what? Weird? Weird how?”
“You’ll know. Sit tight, precious.”
Petal turned and joined Gabriel on the grey stone platform outside of the train. It was
no more than a few metres wide, and the stained, tiled wall curved upwards, creating an archway over the train. Gerry admired the organic nature of it: real materials, real handwork. He felt its gravity and presence. Qualities so often missing in nanotube-based materials and holo-projections. Beyond the platform, the train tunnel opened to a cloudless grey-blue sky. Red dust rose and spun into miniature twisters from the parched, bare ground. On the horizon, low and blocky, a series of buildings gathered together like a pack of sleeping dogs.
So this is the scorched earth… the results of the Cataclysm, Gerry thought as he pondered the nature of those buildings. Clearly not everything had been destroyed.
The wind picked up, changed direction, and blew his way.
He breathed in the scent: it smelled wet and heavy with promises, adventure, and danger—of times past, times before the Cataclysm. Nothing survived, they said. All was lost. Now, he knew different. Something did… out there in the dust another living thing existed. He tapped his foot eagerly as he gripped his gun. Gerry was never a patient man. The waiting pulled at him with the weight of gravity, of the tides, of that terrible yearning that boiled within him.
A deep breath and he calmed his nerves.
Petal and Gabriel looked back at him, faces straight, and then they turned a corner out of sight.
***
How long should he have waited? Gabe and Petal didn’t say, but they hadn’t returned in what must have been ten minutes. Or was it ten hours? While he waited, Gerry devoured the first three chapters of the Hacking With Helix book like a child discovering ice cream for the first time.
Imprinted on his mind, like maps, were exploit algorithms, defence mechanisms, early warning systems, and attack ideologies. For the first time in his life he felt like it was actually him who was capable of doing this stuff and not his AIA.
A thrill of excitement ran through him as he pictured himself exorcising demonic AIs like Gabe. The potential and the power—via his own mind and not through a preprogrammed device—made him feel more alive than he could remember. But it didn’t last.
A scream, certainly from Petal, erupted from outside and echoed down the tunnel.
Grabbing the bag and gripping the gun, Gerry ignored their advice and bolted out of the carriage onto the platform. He sprinted the hundred-or-so metres to the exit and spun left.
Gabriel lay at an awkward angle: bent over himself at the foot of a four-metre-high tower. It was barely wide enough to house two people. It looked like a stack of kids’ grey building blocks. A shadow moved behind a small glass window at head height.
Petal stood to the side of the tower. She, too, was bent over, but still on her feet. Blood oozed from her mouth into a dark pool on the dusty earth.
Gerry rushed over.
Petal turned. “Go back!”
“What’s happened?” Gerry asked, wondering if Gabe was dead.
Before Petal could respond, a door in the side of the tower creaked open, and a round metal barrel extended from the gloom. Petal grabbed at Gerry’s shirt and pulled him aside as a thunderous explosion erupted from the gun. He’d never heard such a deep, powerful explosion before. It made his guts squirm.
He fell to the floor, scrabbling in the sickly pool of blood as Petal tried to pull him away from the corner of the tower. A low, heavy voice called out in frustration from within the tower. “You burnt-out, cheap hacking swines!”
The metal door flung open and clanged against the tower. Two heavy footsteps thudded into the dirt, and when Gerry looked up, a man wearing thick, black coveralls and wielding a large, long-barrelled gun blotted out the light. He was as wide as two men side by side. Gerry couldn’t make out his features in the silhouette but felt the hatred emanating from him.
The man pointed the barrel at Gerry, who continued to scrabble on his back like a stuck beetle.
“This a new friend, huh, Petal? Not anymore…”
As the man moved his finger over the trigger, Petal spun round. The chromed spike as long as her arm extended from her palm with a snap. She drove it with all the weight of her body into the man’s ribs, sending the barrel into the air as he sent another booming shot into the empty sky. He howled as he spun round, dragging Petal with him.
“Gez! Help. Shoot him!”
The gun! Where was his gun? He must have dropped it as he fell. While the man was crushing Petal against the tower and screaming in pain, Gerry frantically searched the ground on all fours for the gun. Another metallic crash and the man continued to smash Petal up against the tower. Each impact brought a grunt of anguish from the pair of them as Petal’s spike remained in his ribs.
Touching the coldness of the gun’s handle, Gerry snatched it up. His hand wobbled as he took aim. The first shot went wide, but the second caught his knee, sending the man to the ground, taking Petal with him. He hit the ground hard, crushing Petal beneath his weight.
She tried to pull her arm free, screaming as his bulk continued to crush her small, fragile body.
Petal managed to gasp a single word between snatched breaths. “Help—”
Gerry rushed over, tried to force the man over, but he weighed considerably more than a normal man should. Petal’s head hit the dirt. The lenses of her goggles turned red, and for a split second, she looked like a damaged, discarded doll—still and broken.
Anger welled up inside his guts like boiling water. His vision narrowed until all he could see was the man’s massive head. He, too, wore goggles, but they were covered in sand and dust. He sported a pair of sick-looking scars across his right cheek, and numerous jack ports punctured his neck.
Moving his gun against the man’s head, Gerry closed his eyes and fired a single bullet. His shaking hand and struggling target conspired to send his bullet wide. The shot ricocheted off the tower with a spark.
The man thrust out a hand and grabbed Gerry by the leg. His grip felt like it would snap his bone. Panicked, Gerry raised the gun again and, despite his tremble, managed to aim the gun and fire accurately.
The gore of the man’s skull and brain muffled the shot.
The tower, once dull and grey, now featured a red and bone-coloured paint job.
With a lunatic’s strength and the monsoon of adrenaline that threatened to drown him, he finally managed to push to one side the dead piece of meat. He pulled Petal out from under him, and her long, thin conelike weapon slipped out of his rib cage with a sucking noise.
Her once pale face was now decorated with an ugly purple-black bruise. Her lip puffed twice its regular size and was split down the middle. She coughed, and Gerry’s relief threatened to bring him to the ground. “You’re alive! Petal, are you okay?”
She nodded slowly and rubbed at her chest.
Gabriel moaned and turned his head to Gerry. He looked worse than Petal. His skin was almost as grey as the tower. A wire from his neck trailed across the ground to a small rusted box attached to the outside of the tower.
“Gabe! You okay?”
He nodded his head slowly. His eyes squeezed tightly closed. Petal reached up and gripped Gerry’s hand to get his attention. “You gotta stop the alarm. Within minutes every City Earth border goon will be on us like flies on crap.” She frantically pointed to the open door to the tower.
Inside, a single console with a holographic projector showed a large circle surrounded by a concentric ring. Along this ring, there were at least fifty, maybe more, small squares. Gerry guessed these were the towers. The circle, he assumed, was probably City Earth.
There were no obvious ways of manipulating or connecting to the console.
One of the squares began to flash, and outside, a siren began to tear through the atmosphere.
“I can’t stop it!” Gerry searched the console and all round the small room. It was empty: just a chair and the damned projection of the map.
He stuck his head outside, looking at Petal and Gabriel, who were helping each other up. Then Gerry caught on: the wire coming from Gabe’s neck into the box.
>
“Gabe, how do I connect? With that box?”
Gabriel smiled and shook his head. “You gotta go in deeper. Like the guard here…” Gabriel kicked at the man’s head until it rolled over, facing Gerry. His goggles were ripped to shreds from the gun blast. Inside one eye socket something glinted—something metallic.
“Ever hacked a dead man?” Gabe said.
Chapter 7
Gerry helped Gabriel to his feet and looked away as the older man removed the jack plug from his neck. Despite his own newly fitted ports, he still couldn’t get used to the idea of plugging hardware into one’s self. It wasn’t natural.
“You’ll get used to it eventually, man,” Gabriel said as he let the cable drop to the dusty ground.
“It’s part of you now, part of your job,” Petal said.
“Job? I didn’t ask for this.” Gerry slumped against the tower and eased the pain in his neck. His whole body felt like taut rope. “What do you need me to do?”
Gabriel twisted his neck and stretched his arms. He looked rough: heavy bags under his eyes and a network of bloodshot veins infiltrating his corneas. Gabe kicked at the massive corpse. “This guard right ’ere is usually accommodating, but he got greedy, wanted more than we could afford. That box over there that I was connected to—that’s a donation box. It took all my bins and refused to let us through. Something’s changed. I need you to get inside his head, crack his AIA, switch off the alarm, and see what’s going on. And you’ve probably got about five minutes to do it before we’re executed by his pals.”
“He’s dead. See—no brains left. What do you expect me to find?”
Petal’s face lit up with a wicked grin.
“What?” Gerry asked as Gabe joined Petal in their secret glee. It felt like he was back at first school. A green, know-nothing kid.
“You really don’t know? Oh, that’s real precious. The Family have you lot completely duped.”
Code Breakers: Alpha Page 5
