The Infinity Mainframe (Tombs Rising Book 3)

by Robert Scott-Norton

  "And what if I change my mind?"

  Dr Pemberton frowned. "Is that something you're likely to do?"

  "No offence," he said, nodding at Berko who remained impassive, "but I don't see that letting a teep loose inside my head will make me better."

  Ruby shouldn't have been surprised by her dad's bluntness, after all, she'd had to put up with it throughout her childhood, but it still took some nerve to say this in front of the people who were here to help him. Before she could apologise for his behaviour, Berko spoke up.

  "You don't like telepaths. That's OK. That's not necessary for the treatment to be successful. But I can already sense trouble in your mind that goes beyond a traditional condition. I've discussed your case in detail with Dr Pemberton and I'm not just sure I can help you; I'm certain I'm the only one who can make this problem go away. Without me, your life will get very difficult. All the evidence points to a serious breakdown of your synaptic pathways and there are signs that the deterioration will accelerate."

  Ruby looked at Dr Pemberton who slipped his hands into his pocket. He cleared his throat. "It's difficult to make more than educated guesses. Berko has had time to study your father's results since we last spoke. He's more familiar with the symptoms than I am."

  Berko smiled. Ruby didn't.

  Her dad spoke. "How many have you dealt with?"

  Berko tilted his head. "How many what?"

  "You say you know what's been going on with my head. You've studied the test results and you know what's happened to me. Tell me. I want to hear it."

  "You're suffering from a telepathic rearrangement of mental pathways. A telepathic adjuster has been inside your head and removed some of your memories. What you're suffering from now, directly results from that interference."

  Ruby looked at her dad who was suddenly still. Dr Pemberton had alluded to telepathic interference in her last conversation with him, but he'd not gone as far as to suggest that adjusters were a possibility. Something turned in her stomach, and she was glad that the window had been left open letting fresh air into the room.

  Adjusters meant trouble. Ruby had never met one. She’d never met anyone who claimed to have met one. As to which department they even worked for… well, it was fair to say that no department would admit to having such telepaths at their disposal.

  And here was her dad’s doctor explaining in very plain direct terms that the problem with Dad wasn’t some medical condition that could be treated with conventional therapies. Adjusters had messed with her dad’s mind.

  A shiver ran across her shoulders and she found herself hugging her arms against her chest.

  How the hell had Dad got mixed up with adjusters?

  12:52 PM

  Ten minutes later, Ruby had left her dad in the room to get settled whilst she went into an adjacent room with Dr Pemberton and Berko Afolayan. A large window was set in the shared wall and Ruby realised that this was the other side of the mirror in her dad’s room. It was a piece of one-way glass; she’d not imagined the hospital would have had such a facility.

  Dr Pemberton passed her a thin set of forms and a pen and asked her to read and sign the medical waiver.

  With her heart beating faster than usual, she sat and worked through the document. It all seemed fairly typical to her; arse-covering all the way. After she’d signed and passed the sheaf of paper back to the doctor, she noticed Berko once again staring at her quietly.

  “Is there a problem?”

  Berko’s eyes darted away, then back to meet her own. A dark brown, with that same intense quality she’d seen in many class threes before. “You have a thing against telepaths.”

  Dr Pemberton shifted in his chair and put his pen back in his jacket pocket. “I don’t think that now is a good time for this.”

  “No,” Ruby answered, ignoring the doctor’s divergence. “I don’t have a problem.”

  “You work for the DRT.”

  “I’m only making sure that the rules are adhered to.”

  “I read you caught another rogue last month,” Berko said.

  “Yes.”

  “Your department said he was a danger to society.”

  “He was.”

  “He was a widower with three kids at home who are now being taken into care. Whatever the courts decide to do with him, those children will never know the same man who’s raised them.”

  “You think we should have ignored him,” Ruby countered. “Let him go about his business without interfering?”

  Berko shrugged. “It might have been the kinder thing to do.”

  “He was armed, prepared to kill.”

  “Maybe he was just there to make a point. You were about to turn his life upside down. He knew it was coming.”

  “He should have gone through the registration process and been honest about who he was.”

  “And is that something you would do? He worked as a teacher—had trained for it for five years and was working with primary school children. Your system would not have allowed that to continue. You were asking him to throw all of that away so he could what? Be passed to the next highest bidder by OsMiTech?”

  “You work through OsMiTech.”

  “Obviously.”

  “You’re a class three telepath. You’re paid to drill into people’s minds and make things better. If it wasn’t for OsMiTech what would you be doing instead?”

  “I was training to be a psychologist.”

  “And you’re doing that and more. I don’t think I understand the problem.”

  “That is the problem.” He checked the time on his HALO then nodded and left Ruby in the room on her own.

  Ruby turned her attention back to the observation window. Her dad was sitting on the edge of his bed. He’d moved the table in front of him and was working on a jigsaw light-beam. She recognised the Eiffel Tower and was surprised by how much of the picture he’d completed in the time she’d left him alone.

  She went through to wait with him.

  “Everything OK?” he asked glancing up.

  Ruby sat down beside him and put an arm around him, resting her head on his shoulder. She closed her eyes and smiled as he put an arm around her in return.

  “It will be OK,” he said, answering his own question. “You don’t have to worry about me.”

  “I’m not worried,” she lied. The lies were getting easier. Her eyes were stinging from the tears she was holding back. “I know everything’s going to be OK. I just miss us when it was the old us. Before we had to deal with any of this.”

  He rubbed her shoulder. Squeezed the muscle. Kissed the side of her head. “We will be fine. We’ve got the best people working on me. They won’t mess up.”

  Why did he have to say that? It would be easy for them to mess up. Berko might lose concentration and before anyone knew it, half of Dad’s memories could be wiped.

  “You sound remarkably confident all of a sudden.”

  “I know how much of a burden I am.”

  She rose and was about to interrupt him but he put a finger on her lips, shaking his head. “No. I am. I’m not blind. You know, I took great pride in being able to look after my family. You and your mum were everything to me. And I know it’s hard to see that what with me being at work so much, but I was doing it for us, for a life outside of the habitat blocks. You think I’ve messed up. That I don’t know what I’m doing anymore, but you’re wrong. I don’t go through life blundering. You don’t have to worry.”

  Ruby wanted to have it out with him then about the money going to the church. If he was so proud of the life he was building before his illness and mum’s death, and so desperate to keep out of the blocks, why was he making it impossible to live anywhere else. She wanted to say this, opened her mouth to speak and then the door opened and they were no longer alone.

  “We’re ready now,” Berko said.

  *

  Ruby had relocated to the warmth of the observation room and sat on a chair right up to the glass. Dr Pemberton s
at beside her, an access point open on the window in front of him where he was busy concentrating on charts and streams of vitals. A steady cardiogram pulsed in one of these displays.

  Dad hadn’t wanted her to leave him but Berko insisted. She watched through the glass as Berko pulled up a chair beside her dad’s bed and sat down beside him. The bed faced the glass and Ruby stared at her dad’s face, hoping that he could somehow sense she was close. His features were taut and humourless.

  “How long will it take?” she asked Dr Pemberton.

  “Berko advised that it shouldn’t take more than twenty minutes during this initial inspection. It’s just to get the lie of the land first. Then they’ll both take a break during which myself and Berko will discuss how to proceed.”

  Ruby tried to relax but she couldn’t sit still.

  Berko got up and pressed the button to recline her dad’s bed slightly. He sat on his chair and took hold of her dad’s hand. Instantly, the readings intensified, the heart rate went up ten percent. She watched as Dad closed his eyes and seemed to slump back into the pillow like he’d fallen into a cavernous sleep.

  It was fascinating to watch, despite nothing visible to show for it. Both Berko and her dad had gone still, sitting silently like photographs.

  Her HALO buzzed. Another message from Fin. He was as concerned about Dad as she was.

  Ruby focused on the men in the other room and noted that Dr Pemberton had leant forward beside her. He stopped tapping on the access point he’d made and together they watched.

  Dad lurched forward on his bed and grabbed Berko around the neck with both hands.

  “Oh my God,” Ruby heard herself saying. Dad was out of the bed now and standing before Berko with his hands tight around the man’s windpipe. “Stop him!” she shouted to Dr Pemberton, but he had already run from the room. She raced after him and once in the bedroom, charged at her dad’s shoulder pushing him backwards. Her dad was strong. Dr Pemberton had his hands on top of her dad’s, attempting to pull them away from Berko’s neck. Berko had his own hands at her dad’s wrists, pushing them away, gasping for air like a landed fish.

  Ruby shouted at Dad to stop but he wasn’t listening. His features were contorted, bunched up in a rage she’d never seen before. It frightened her to her core. The man didn’t seem like her dad at all. “Let go!” she yelled and then her training kicked in. She got around him on the bed and positioned her arm under his chin pulling backwards, squeezing at the same time. Restrict his air flow, that’s all I’m doing, she thought as the tears rolled down her face.

  Security guards arrived in the doorway and didn’t miss a beat as they dove at her dad. Ruby released her grip but was pushed backwards off the bed and landed on the floor. The struggling stopped, and she got up to see the guards manhandle a now confused man back onto the bed. All fight had evaporated. Only his heavy breathing and sweat on his forehead betrayed he’d even been involved in an incident.

  Berko was gasping for air and backed away to the door. He hung onto the door handle for support as he stared across at Ruby and her dad, fear etched in his eyes.

  Despite her dad’s new calm state, the guards didn’t let up their pressure on him, pushing him back against the mattress whilst Dr Pemberton fastened restraints. Only when the buckles were secure did the guards let up and take a step back. Ruby glared across the room at Berko. The rage she felt threatened to consume her. “What the hell did you do to him?”

  Berko shook his head, dismissing the accusation. He finally let go of the door handle and keeping an eye on the bed, took a few steps back into the room. Dr Pemberton dismissed the guards but Ruby noticed they drifted, keeping an eye on her dad and once out in the corridor, remained by the open door.

  “I did nothing to him,” Berko replied. “That was an unprovoked attack.”

  “Bullshit,” Ruby spat. “I knew I shouldn’t have let you go messing around in there.”

  “And I’m telling you it was unprovoked. I’d only started my initial attempts at probing. Nothing too intrusive. It was a telepaths way of saying hello. Nothing more. Your father was resistant all the time. I hit a wall and did the equivalent of a telepath’s knock at the door. The next thing I knew was your father trying to kill me.”

  “He wasn’t trying to kill you.”

  “He had his hands around Berko’s throat, Ruby. It certainly looks that way.”

  Ruby glanced down at her dad. His breathing was quick and shallow. The monitoring equipment had finally settled into a normal pattern, indicator lights green. Defending what she’d seen was crazy, but it was all she could do. No way was she going to stand by and let dad get all the shit for what had happened.

  “That wasn’t my dad. What did you do?”

  Berko went to the sink in the corner of the room and splashed water on his face. When he straightened, he looked confident again, surer of himself. “I can only repeat myself.”

  Ruby looked to Dr Pemberton. “This was your idea. Can you explain what happened?”

  “Well, I think we can rule out Alzheimer’s.”

  “Not funny.”

  “I wasn’t trying.”

  “You suggested he have this investigation. You said it would help. But you’ve just induced a psychotic episode in my father. I’ll report this to the hospital administrator.”

  The doctor’s eyes narrowed. “That won’t help. You’ve signed your father into our care. We’ve taken all reasonable steps to ensure his safety in this. We want him to get better as much as you do.”

  Ruby looked at the doctor. As much as she wanted to believe that was true, she found lingering doubts in her mind. This was exhaustion talking, she knew that. This wasn’t a conspiracy.

  Her HALO buzzed and she glanced at the display. It was Glynn calling and suddenly she was glad of a reason to leave the room and be distracted by something else.

  This isn’t over.” She kissed her dad on the cheek. “I’ll be back soon.”

  2:01 PM

  Ruby shook her head and turned left out of her dad’s hospital room. There was a stairwell at the end of the corridor. She pushed open the door and climbed half-way up to the next level. The HALO hadn’t given up trying to attract her attention. Glynn was persistent.

  She sat on the step, took a deep breath and answered the call.

  “Now’s not a great time,” she told her boss. “I’m at the hospital with Dad.”

  “Ruby, there’s been a development. Anna Lovett is dead.”

  Ruby dropped her head forward. “What do you mean? She can’t be dead. I only spoke to her on Friday.”

  “You spoke to her?” Concern in his voice. “Why did you speak to her?”

  “I thought I had a lead. I wanted to sound her out.”

  “Without discussing it with me?”

  “There didn’t seem time.”

  “What lead?” Glynn asked.

  “Something in the archive. There were discrepancies on the date of Nikoli’s screening at OsMiTech. I couldn’t find his records.”

  He was quiet. Ruby couldn’t tell how the news would go with Glynn which was one of the reasons why she’d neglected to tell him about the meeting with Anna. When he spoke, she could hear the irritation. “You confronted Anna over a discrepancy?”

  “It wasn’t just a discrepancy. Records had been deleted.”

  “That doesn’t mean that anyone’s deliberately hiding facts.”

  “Of course it does. What else could it mean?”

  “Filing error. That’s all. Jesus, what the hell are you playing at? Anna’s dead, Ruby. I’ve spoken to the police. This is a murder enquiry,” he said quietly. “You met with her shortly before her death. They’re going to want to speak to you.”

  “I’ve got nothing to hide.”

  “Except you have been hiding. You deliberately kept from me the fact that you’d confronted her.”

  Ruby sighed. “It wasn’t a confrontation. I was sounding her out.”

  “Semantics. You would have spo
ken to me first but you knew you were on shaky ground.”

  Ruby stood and leant on the handrail, looking through the window at the town. She needed to get back to Dad and speak to his doctors. She was wasting her time with Glynn. “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m not sure sorry’s going to cut it this time.”

  Ruby shook her head and grimaced. “What happened to Anna? How did she die?”

  “She’d taken Jack Winston with her to see a second remnant keeper, Honey Brown. They were taking her Nikoli’s eye, but shortly after they got there, Jack reports they were attacked by the same man who’d killed his wife. That man killed Anna and tried to force Nikoli’s wife’s eye from his head.”

  “What the hell does he want with her eye?”

  “I don’t know. But this has to be connected, doesn’t it? I mean, you were looking into what Nikoli was working on,” Glynn said.

  “Yeah, but I mean, I haven’t got anywhere yet. Why would they kill Anna?”

  “Damned if I know. But, be careful who you talk to. I’m not even sure you should be on your own.” He sounded panicky. “Is Fin back staying with you?”

  Ruby sighed. She just wasn’t getting away from Fin anytime soon. “Yeah, Glynn, I’ll make sure I’m careful.”

  “Good,” he said, then hesitated. “There’s something else. I’m managed to set you up as Nikoli’s replacement. Don’t ask,” he finished, answering her unanswered question.

  For a moment, Ruby had difficulty breathing. This was what she wanted, so why did it suddenly seem like the worst possible idea in the world? She composed herself.

  “Thank you,” she said. “When do I start?”

  “You’re to meet Nikoli’s liaison tomorrow at OsMiTech headquarters. I’ll send you the details.”

  Her mind raced. She wondered how much of the blocking suppressor she had left at home. There was the code of conduct that all telepaths were meant to adhere to but she held no stock in that right now.

  “Right. Thanks,” she said.

  “You don’t have to do this. I can tell them you’re unavailable.”

  “No,” she found herself saying more forcefully than she’d intended. “I want to go. I asked for this.”