Revolution: A Red Dog Thriller (The Altered Book 3)

by Blou Bryant

  “We had one, and it’s gone to crap. Trix and Sandra told us we couldn’t fight,” said Wyatt, sick of being challenged.

  “Fight? Who are you going to fight? Cops are all over the place,” she said.

  Wyatt glared at her and she stared back.

  “Come on,” she said, flicking at her cheek stud, making little clicking noises. “Do you two really need to go out there, right freaking now, and swing your dicks to prove you’re doing something?”

  “Should we just sit here?”

  “No, your plan is good. Fight when we need to fight, stand back when we don’t, and continue to go after Jessica’s systems. It’s all working out, so why are you two pouting?”

  “We’re not pouting,” he pouted. “What do you want us to do?”

  “Seymour, show them what you’ve been working on.” When he didn’t look up, she walked over and tapped him on the head.

  He glanced up as if surprised to find that he wasn’t alone. “What?”

  “Tell them what you told me.”

  With a squint, Seymour looked to each of them in turn. “Oh, yes. Well, we were doing it wrong.”

  “It?” asked Wyatt.

  “Yes, trying to crack Jessica’s system, well, we did it wrong, her defenses are too good.”

  “Great to know, now, after we’ve broken into six of them. It was all a waste? Are you saying it won’t work?”

  “No, yes, that’s it. It won’t ever work.”

  Wyatt was about to make a snarky comment when Emm shook a finger at him. “For a guy obsessed with time, you sure as hell aren’t patient. Quiet, boss, let him explain.”

  Putting his tablet down on his lap, Seymour took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “We learned a lot from what you’ve uploaded. We’re in all those auxiliary systems, now I understand how they work. It’s simple, I was stupid, I should have realized.”

  “What?” asked Wyatt, frustrated. “Get to the point.”

  “Well, we tried to upload a virus to each of them and have them upload it to her system. But the systems—the code—aren’t static, they use a natural learning model. The code that works remains and the code that fails is junked. It’s like how a child learns.”

  “How?” asked Rocky, leaning in.

  “The old way we programmed was to tell the computer—in code—that…” Seymour paused, looking to the ceiling while he thought of an example. “We’d tell the computer that touching a hot stove is bad. With natural learning, we let the computer figure it out on its own—by touching the hot stove. Not just once, but hundreds… no… millions of times. It writes its own code by trying, by testing.”

  “So, the machines dump anything that’s not useful?”

  “That’s right. I checked the code we already upload. On the first machines, it’s degraded.”

  “This natural learning, you’re talking about artificial intelligence?”

  “Well, yes and no. Sure, it’s called AI, but it’s not really. We don’t understand human intelligence, and we can’t replicate it. It doesn’t exist, not like we think of it.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a lot of things. IQ tests check for some abilities, but not others… smarts are way too complex for a test. IQ tests are like internet quizzes. They might make you feel better, they’re fun, but it’s all bull-crappy.”

  “Great talk, post it online,” said Wyatt. “How does this help us?”

  “Let him finish,” said Rocky, waving a hand at Wyatt to relax.

  “Don’t think computers are like people. They only learn their job, nothing else. So, one is good at chess, another is good at predicting what you will want to buy online, and a third is good at diagnosing mental illness. That’s their AI learning. We need to use that.”

  “How?” asked Wyatt. This was the part he cared about. How to use the machines to get at Jessica.

  “We need to stop trying to force them to crack Jessica’s servers. Instead, we need to understand what they’re built for and teach them. We need to make them want to help us.”

  “How?” asked Wyatt.

  “We will teach them to go after her. We need to alter the code, get it on a lot of machines, and let it evolve.”

  Wyatt perked up. This was something he could do. Break into more server farms, upload more code. Much better than sitting around here. “How many?”

  “Thousands.”

  Emm smiled at Wyatt’s alarmed reaction and said, “Don’t worry, we have a plan.”

  “And…”

  “We’re not ready yet, but will be soon.”

  “So, why are you here?”

  Emm grimaced at him. “We wanted to tell you. Well, I wanted to, he wanted to wait until he was ready…” she pointed to Seymour who had turned back to his tablet.

  After hours of staring at others through the window, Wyatt was pleased that something was working out, even if it was because something else hadn’t. “Go then, make your plan, and come back when you’re ready.”

  Her chains jingling, she tapped Seymour on the head again and he followed her out of the room, his head down.

  “So,” said Wyatt, “I guess my orders weren’t a waste of time after all.”

  Rocky pointed out the window. “Nope, not at all. Did you notice that Marylyn has been out there for the last thirty minutes?”

  Sure enough, she was on the street, arguing with several police officers, a bundle of papers in hand. “Legal stuff, I bet,” said Wyatt.

  “Just like you told her to do.”

  “I guess it’s going okay.”

  “Even if we’re not in the middle of it.”

  “Still,” said Wyatt, “I’d prefer to be busting heads.”

  Rocky nodded in agreement. “Perhaps we can sneak out and find Watchers to punch around.”

  “Without telling anyone? We’d get in trouble with Trix and Sandra.”

  Shrugging, Rocky grinned. “Only if they find out. You don’t mind trouble?”

  “I can handle it.”

  “I could handle it better with some food in my belly,” said Rocky, with an impish grin.

  Wyatt leaned forward at this. “You know where Sandra’s stash is?”

  “All her junk? The chocolate, the chips?” asked Rocky, standing up and walking across the room. “Perhaps.”

  “She’s going to kill you,” said Wyatt, his stomach growling. He got to his feet and joined Rocky at an old credenza that had a built-in record player. Opening the top, he revealed a gold mine of junk food.

  The pair spent the next hour watching the street and waiting for the sun to go down, eating chips and chocolate bars from Sandra’s hidden stash.

  “Teach her right, keeping us out of sight,” said Wyatt, tossing a Twix to Rocky.

  “Damn right. You know she’s avoiding us, probably figures we’re up here moping around,” the other man said, ripping open the wrapper and scarfing both bars into his mouth. He laughed. “Little does she know.”

  “We’ll get in trouble, leaving without permission,” said Wyatt with good humor, not worried. “You ready for that?” He took the last two cookies out of a Girl Guides box, one white, one black.

  “I’ve been in trouble my whole life,” replied Rocky, stacking three peanut butter cups, and taking a bite out of the makeshift chocolate sandwich.

  Wyatt smiled at that. Despite spending three years with the Dogs and training daily with Rocky, he didn’t know much about the man, but wasn’t at all surprised at the thought of a rebellious childhood. “What’s a bit more, right?”

  “Right.” Picking up a bag of chips, Rocky pointed out the window. “Not a lot of trouble out there tonight, despite what happened today. Girls are doing good.”

  “Can’t tell them that, though, can we? They’d get big heads. And Sandra’d beat you until you were even uglier than you already are, if she heard you called her a girl, not a woman.”

  “Whatever, little man. Girls like my face. It’s manly, got character, ain’t pretty like
you.”

  “Pretty? I’m chiseled, that’s what Hannah says,” replied Wyatt.

  “That one likes you too much, she’s blind to your brand of ugly,” answered Rocky, pouring peanuts from a bag into his mouth, following them with chips, until his cheeks bulged.

  Wyatt simply smiled and took a bite out of a Kit Kat not even bothering to break the bars apart. She did like him.

  The two lapsed into comfortable silence.

  An hour later they were on the street, having snuck out the back door of the HUC without being seen.

  The Zone was quiet. Police patrolled for the first time in months. He wouldn’t tell her, but Trix had done a good job of settling tensions. It didn’t mean they weren’t going to fight back, but she’d made sure things hadn’t exploded, and that would let him put his plan in place.

  The two men explored for two hours but there wasn’t a Watcher to be seen, much less punched. There were small groups of Zone citizens hanging out, but their weapons were hidden—still there, but hidden. There wasn’t a fight to be found.

  Eventually they gave up and returned to the HUC. Sandra was in her room with Trix and Hannah when the two arrived.

  “What’s up?” the director asked and the pained expression on her face was momentarily replaced by a sly grin, as if she knew what they’d been up to.

  “Went for a walk,” said Rocky, pulling a beer from the fridge, as if they hadn’t been out looking for trouble. He offered one to Wyatt, who refused, taking a water instead.

  “Uh-huh,” was the only reply. The grin faded quickly, the day wouldn’t soon be forgotten, and her normal devilish self wouldn’t return, Wyatt suspected, until peace was restored. She’d came to take her responsibilities more seriously than he’d ever expected.

  As Trix and Sandra took turns describing the events of the afternoon and evening, Wyatt wobbled a bit on his feet. He sat down, feeling off. He listened as they talked.

  The bodies had been moved to an empty house and would be buried the next day in an old graveyard in the Zone. The police had visited the site of the killings, but with no evidence, and no witnesses willing to speak, they’d left. Marylyn had got the promised injunction and ran legal interference.

  There was a pause when Trix described the burnt-out shell of the bulldozer. The three women stared at Wyatt, but he waved them off with a flip of his hand. He wondered what it all meant for him, but he wasn’t ready to discuss it. He didn’t know what he’d say, even if he wanted to talk it out.

  They were safe for the night at least. Tomorrow would be another day.

  Chapter 8

  Despite the stresses of the day—or perhaps because of them, Wyatt fell asleep the moment his head hit the pillow, but he woke several times in the first hours, his dreams bringing no relief or respite. Images of the battle on Draft Street appeared and then vanished.

  Ezzy haunted him, her face looking up at him from the ground, her eyes alive and accusatory in his dream.

  Teri intruded. First a younger Teri, sweet and gentle, and then the older one he’d just met, strong willed and demanding.

  More sleep—or was there? The red globe from the day enveloped him, or seemed to. He opened his eyes and ripped the bandage off his ever-bleeding hand. But there was no spark, no lights, it was a dream, only a dream.

  Wyatt flipped from one side to the other, shoved his head deep into a pillow, and pulled his quilt and sheets high over his head, but nothing blocked out the intrusions.

  He didn’t think he’d fallen back to sleep but the sound of his makeshift alarm—the cup on his doorknob hitting the ground—and the light coming on started him awake. He groaned and rolled over. Remembering his situation, he sat up, squinting at the light. Ari stood in the door, Ira and Emm behind her.

  “Come on, get up” Ari said, moving with urgency to the side of the bed.

  Ira picked up his pants off the floor and threw them at him. “Get dressed.”

  Wyatt blinked several times and rubbed at his eyes. He was normally quick to wake—his life over the previous four years was such that he needed to always be on guard. But the strange and frequent dreams had left him confused and unsure. Was this another?

  Emm pulled the sheets off him. “Get up, now.”

  Wyatt pulled them back. He was in good shape from years of training, but that didn’t mean he wanted to sit in his tight black boxer-briefs in front of them. “What’s happened?” he asked, his mind coming around, realizing that whatever it was, wasn’t good.

  Ira said, “Teri’s…”

  “In trouble,” finished Ari.

  This woke him fully and he threw off the blankets, no longer worried about what Emm and the twins saw. “Tell me,” he said as he slid into his jeans.

  Ari had moved to the door, ready to leave. “She’s messaged me. People are coming, she needs us.”

  Taking a shirt and socks from the pile on the floor, Wyatt finished dressing in a hurry. “What was the message? Show me.”

  “Not like that,” said Ari.

  “The other messaging… she pathed.” said Ira.

  Teri could do that too?

  Ari and Ira shot out the door, with Emm waiting behind, waving him on like a jet about to take off. Wyatt left the questions behind, slipped on his shoes and followed them out of the room. The girls broke into a run and took the stairs in broad jumps.

  As they exited the rear of the building, he paused. “Where are we going?”

  “We got a car,” said Ira.

  “Sandra’s car,” said Ari.

  “You can drive?” he asked, surprised that Sandra would have given them the keys. She loved her old Mustang.

  “No…”

  “But you can,” said Ira, tossing him a set of keys which he caught, despite the darkness. He got in the front seat of the black Ford and had the engine humming before the twins got in. “I can’t believe Sandra loaned you her car,” he said and gunned it out of the parking lot as their doors closed.

  “Well…”

  “She didn’t.”

  If he wasn’t in the doghouse already for running around with Rocky, he would be now. He slowed down as he approached a corner. “Where are we going?”

  “Marylyn’s house.”

  Wyatt closed his eyes, remembered the direction, and then floored it again, squealing tires as he turned up the street. “Tell me,” he said, “what do you know?”

  Ari was in the front with him. “Just that we—you—needed to come right away. She pathed a sense of danger and urgency.”

  “Pathed?” asked Emm.

  “That’s what we call it. Like texting, but emotions, feelings… sensations.”

  “What’s the danger? Did she say?”

  “It’s not like that, it’s not talking, there are no words.”

  “Fine. Did you get any sense of what the danger is?”

  “No,” said Ari.

  Wyatt wove between autonomous cars, ignoring the danger that one was taping him or would automatically report him for dangerous driving. The police were bureaucrats, they’d take the report and send an email notice or a fine.

  “Are we enough?” he asked, only now realizing that they hadn’t brought back up.

  “Don’t know. She wanted you.”

  Was this real, or was it Teri’s way of forcing him to talk to her? She’d been so insistent earlier, worried about him and his health. Waking him up wasn’t going to help with that. As he drove through dark empty streets, he became more and more sure that this was the case. Still, sleep had sucked, might as well be awake. “So, she can do this too?”

  “This?” asked Emm.

  “You know… telepathy,” he said, feeling uncomfortable as he said it. He didn’t believe in such things. Months before, it had seemed as if Ari had communicated with him, and put him on the path of a murderer. He’d never discussed it with them, and generally tried to not think of it.

  “Your special skill,” he said, correcting himself. That sounded better, it avoided the mumb
o-jumbo.

  “Dunno. I’ve never met her, never talked to her.”

  “How’d you know it’s her?”

  Ari shrugged. “Just do.” Unlike him, she was entirely at ease with the concept and wasn’t troubled by not understanding how it worked.

  For Wyatt, the virus that infected him was an alien. He’d never felt connected to his ability to heal others, and now, after the explosion, he felt even more divorced from whatever flowed through his veins. The twins accepted it, altered through his infection of them and through the special connection they’d forged, conjoined at birth.

  As they neared Marylyn’s house, he quieted his mind and tapped out time on the steering wheel, focused on his objective. The street was empty—and it shouldn’t have been. In other neighborhoods, there would be gang members on street corners, selling drugs, or guns. Not here. Here, they normally stood guard, protecting the woman who’d saved their community. Except tonight.

  As he turned the last corner, he saw the first body. And then a second. Young men or women, lying on the ground, motionless. “Buckle up,” Wyatt said, his voice cold, as he pressed down on the gas.

  The last two blocks sped by, and quickly Wyatt saw what he was looking for. There were two people creeping towards Marylyn’s house. He turned the wheel hard and sped towards the first. The target turned to look as the headlights lit him up and his mouth formed a broad O of surprise. This didn’t change as it hit him, throwing him into the window and over the roof.

  Ari let out a small scream of surprise, as did the target as he flew over them.

  Wyatt didn’t check the mirror to see the results, and instead focused on the second target, who was quicker. She darted towards the corner of the house, but wasn’t going to get away. He pushed harder on the gas and spun the wheel at the same time, digging up lawn as the car spun, its back end slamming into her at the corner of Marylyn’s house.

  This time, Wyatt did check the mirror. She wasn’t visible, but two other attackers were, coming around from behind the house. Turning the wheel to the right this time, he reengaged the gas and peeled around the front of the house as the back windshield shattered.