Hardwired Faith (The Exoskeleton Codex Book 1)

by Sean Kennedy

  The sound of Jacob’s steps blasted in the emptiness. As he sat, he found his back small enough to slide between the armrests. Jacob lowered his alloy hands onto the armrest orbs, and the room fell away into a vision.

  He saw another lush world, and at once knew it was Earth. His vision found a grassy plain in the vastness of Africa. There, in the grasslands, were small monkey-like primates sleeping under a starry sky. Creatures at peace with their world in the passage of time.

  “Had humans been left to evolve on their own, your majesty would have reached and surpassed the Martians in the fullness of time, but the Archons would not make the same mistake twice.” Vade’s voice echoed through the vision.

  “The Archons wanted beings that would evolve to their needs, a being designed and engineered for enslavement.”

  A scorching light enveloped the primates. They tried to run, but Jacob watched as something took hold of their minds, and the creatures stood slack and glassy-eyed in the bright light.

  The light faded and Jacob recognized the same experimentation chamber he had seen used on the Martians, but now the gentle primates lay unrestrained on tables.

  Jacob could see the Archons more clearly, and he studied the strange small beings. They wore no clothing, and even with their large heads and oversized almond eyes, Jacob couldn’t tell them apart from each other. There was no life in them, nothing that would suggest they were even sentient.

  “These are the Archons?” Jacob asked, his voice echoing in the chamber.

  “No. They are puppets,” Vade said. “Stolen genetics grown into soulless shells. They exist as a vessel to hold the consciousness of the Archons in this reality, the same way a glove holds a hand.”

  Jacob remembered his consciousness inside Kage’s t-droid, leaping and tumbling in the moonlight, and looked again at the small gray Archons.

  “In the Archon’s arrogance, they uplifted your species, changing their intelligence and altering humanity’s genetic path for their purposes.”

  The image of Africa emerged again, but now the creatures had heavy sloped brows and carried sharpened sticks as they roamed the grasslands. Gone was the childlike innocence of the peaceful primate, and instead these creatures had a violent light in their eyes as they crouched. They hunted with a fierce lust, catching and killing small creatures, smashing their heads with stones as the scene faded.

  The image of the grassland was replaced by a great expanse of muddied earth, scattered with fur covered men screaming as they fought Roman Centurions. Muscled arms cleaved human flesh, as blood and rain mixed to stain the earth.

  “The Archons have influenced humanity throughout your history. They have controlled kings and holy men down through the ages.”

  The barbarians and Roman soldiers transformed, becoming two lines of horsemen charging into each other wearing bright uniforms. Jacob could see the ecstasy of battle in their eyes as horses and men slammed together with wicked blades.

  “A divided species cannot evolve.”

  The battlefield changed into the desolate trenches of a no man's land, with ragged soldiers cowering as explosions blasted mud and bone into the falling rain. Death fell on the men in water-filled trenches as they drowned amongst the floating corpses.

  From somewhere, the shrill sound of a whistle cut through the artillery blasts, and waves of screaming men climbed from trenches as mechanical gunfire erupted.

  Jacob watched hundreds of boys, not much older than he was, fly apart as industrialized war machines ripped them into bloody hulks, making explosions of human limbs.

  “It is because of the Archons that your history is this way.”

  Jacob heard a sound tearing the sky as two fighter jets flew low across the battlefield, dropping napalm into the fray and the world was engulfed in flames.

  The fire burned itself into smoke, darkening the sky. As it thinned to a haze, a desert city came into view. Jacob saw armed men measuring quantities of chemicals into burning barrels between archaic mud brick buildings.

  Desert war cyborgs emerged from the jamming smoke, and Jacob heard the familiar whine of a mag-cannon spin up before a stream of bullets tore the burn barrel men apart, splattering their bodies over the ancient walls.

  Jam smoke drifted to cover the image of slaughter, and Jacob found himself back sitting on the ancient throne as Vade perched on the back of his hand.

  “The universe is alive Jacob. When something goes wrong, the universe will take steps to correct it. The virus is attacked, foreign cells are destroyed.”

  Jacob shook his head, feeling pain behind his eyes grow as Vade went on.

  “The warlike nature of humanity is your gift.”

  “Wait...” Jacob felt nosebleed pressure building between his eyes, “if Archons have enslaved humanity since the beginning, how can we fight them?”

  “It’s not the Archons you need to be concerned with Jacob; the Fractal are returning.”

  “But… the Archons...”

  “Once the Fractal return, they will strip Earth as they have done to so many other worlds. The Archons will abandon you to the Fractal, and will wait outside space-time to begin the process again.”

  The pressure grew stronger in Jacob’s head.

  “Jacob, listen to me,” Vade flew close to the hummingbird’s spider eyed lenses,“you must find the Martian Citadel.”

  Jacob felt his body tremble as the room began to tilt, “How?” he stammered.

  “Follow your dreams, Jacob, explore, seek.”

  The rock dome’s carved glyphs combined, making a singular huge symbol hovering before Jacob.

  “The beacon is the line Jacob, and the line must exist for there to be boundaries between the infinite and humanity. You must have faith in this, no matter how frightening it becomes.” Vade’s voice echoed as the chamber began drifting away.

  Reality fell into darkness as Vade’s voice filled his mind.

  “Have faith in the Beacon Jacob.... trust the Beacon...”

  Chapter 21

  “Vade!” Jacob cried and bolted upright as his head slipped out of the neural helmet on the bunk. A tall man with a familiar face held him.

  “Easy now lad... easy...” Mac’s gentle voice came as he took the helmet from the pillow.

  The cerebral crawl of recognition began.

  I know this man... a friend… Mac...

  The thoughts trickled in, and Jacob felt the panic drain from his muscles.

  Jacob felt Mac’s powerful hands, one on his chest and one cradling his head, as he laid him back on the bunk's pillow. Mac was smiling wide under his hawkish nose, and his eyes looked glassy as sunlight tripped through the attic window, bouncing around the room.

  “Welcome back.” Mac’s eyes scanned the medical monitor. Jacob wanted to say something, but words felt impossibly heavy. He tried to raise his head, but it only tilted. He saw an intravenous feed and sensor wires trailing across his body.

  “The… Beacon...” He whispered.

  “No worries now, you made it lad, well done.” Mac stroked the stubble of Jacob’s scalp.

  “There's... still... time...” Jacob said, and the specter of slumber overtook him as heavy footfalls fell on the stairs.

  Vincent Slate blasted into the attic almost taking the door from its hinges as Jacob closed his eyes.

  “He’s out again...” Mac scanned the medical monitor again. “...but he woke up, and spoke.”

  “Good.” Slate tried to say, but the word became a violent cough. The stairs had been too much, and Slate tasted copper, but the weight of the last fifty hours was lifted from his back. Standing there watching Jacob in the bunk, there was a joy inside him he hadn’t felt in decades.

  “There’s still time.”

  “That's what he said,” Mac raised his brow and looked at Slate. “Before he fell back asleep, he said there’s still time.”

  “Great minds think alike," Vincent said, not taking his eyes from Jacob’s face.

  The two men stood s
taring at the boy they had snatched back from brain death. After a moment, Slate patted Mac on the shoulder, “Go move around, I’ll take over for a few hours.”

  “Sounds good,” Mac nodded and stood, arching his back and stretching to the symphony of cartilage popping along his spine. He stepped away from the chair and Slate replaced him.

  Despite the stiffness in his joints, Mac glided to the attic door. The long wait was over, and Jacob had come out on top. Mac stopped at the door and looked back at his partner.

  “He’s going to be fine Vince.”

  “You're damn right he is,” Slate coughed again, wiping his mouth with the pocket handkerchief he’d taken to carrying around. Slate’s eyes never looked away from Jacob's face as Mac turned and made his way down the attic stairs.

  The old warhorse still has fight left in him.

  They had a clean start and a new mission. The sun was shining, and there was nothing left but to launch, as they used to say in the Corps.

  As he crossed through the downstairs living room, a shape the size of a large house cat shifted behind an Edwardian chair. A Kaizen house spider moved with the reptilian speed of telescopic legs to hide under it. It was bold for house spiders to be seen during the day, and it confirmed Mac’s suspicions of their concern.

  Mac smiled as he stepped out the front doors and into the veranda’s shade of the midday coastal sun. In the yard, the cheerful colors in the cargo piles shone like party decorations.

  A Kaizen loader still sat empty between the stacks where it had rested for the last fifty hours. Its bright yellow seat pointed at the mismatched front steps.

  The house spider slipped out the front doors behind Mac, scuttling on synthetic gecko feet to the veranda's corner rafters where it could watch and listen.

  Mac nodded to the house spider, and smiled down at the loader.

  “I think the lad’s going to be alright.”

  The End of Book 1.

  Other Books By Sean Kennedy

  Immersion: 2086

  In 2086, reality is augmented.

  Dan Hunter is a field investigator for the augmented and virtual cyberspace of Immersion, the most pervasive and dominant technological platform since the invention of the Internet. A strange complaint leads him into a broadcast storm of living weapons and sensual religious orders, all filtered through augmented and virtual reality circles that spin at the speed of light. A world of evolved black projects and terrible secrets left to fester in the upper atmosphere. Once exposed, those secrets could change mankind forever!

  “If you're a fan of the genres this book falls into or if you're familiar with a soldiers side of things this book is for you. The fast paced storytelling that this author as beautifully put to words with the vivid details easily puts me right in the action.”

  Ambient Reports: 2087

  From the creator of Immersion 2086, comes Ambient Reports : 2087. Thirteen near-now dystopian short stories of a networked future, where life is cybernetic, gene-joked, or fuel for something that is.

  Come into a datastream where the Made lurks in the smash house system, and Plague grows stronger on the Afterlife servers every day. Road trip over the global autobahn; from the Mermanauts’ sunken lands to the sky condo rooftops of Japan, and learn Sean Kennedy’s cyberpunk prophecy!

  Ambient Reports : 2087

  Beware the Zero Day Revolution!

  “Chapter by chapter, Kennedy opens the thirteen doors into his world with a masterful anthology of short stories set in a future that is both scarily familiar and completely foreign at the same time. Weaving stories with threads of morality, sci-fi, horror fiction and high action in a world of constant technological evolution, Kennedy drags you to the darkest corners of a future yet to happen.”

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