“Caught her trying to sneak into the laundry,” I say to the male guard as he comes running up.
He peers down at Jevyn’s unmoving frame, frowning.
“She tried to attack us,” I add in an irked tone. “We had to subdue her.”
“I’ll take her to detainment for questioning,” the guard replies. “Power’s out in the yard. She must have cut the wires. Check the housing unit for a security breach and do a head count. Keep patrolling the area.”
He slings Jevyn’s tiny frame over one shoulder and moves off at a brisk pace, scanning the yard with his flashlight for any additional figures lurking in the shadows.
“Now what?” Solina's huge eyes pin me with a look of desperation. “She’ll squeal as soon as she’s conscious.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I say, briskly. “We won’t be around by then, and anyway her story won’t add up. Ayma logged our IDs and shifts in the network.”
Solina breathes heavily in and out. “They’ll know something’s up when I don’t return with the foraging party.”
I tweak a wry grin. “Trust me, they won’t come looking for you. Rennan will stage a gruesome attack by a predator. Your bloodied uniform will be discovered a short distance from the transport. They’ll assume there’s not enough of you left to bury.”
Solina chews on her lip. A troubled look lingers on her face.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“I don’t know how to drive.”
I groan. Now she tells me. “Zero, gamma,” I say, activating my MicroComm.
“You all right?” Phin asks.
“I’m fine. But we have a problem. Our escapee can’t drive.”
“We’ll add a second guard to the shift to drive the transport,” Phin says. “It heightens the risk of being discovered, but there’s nothing else for it. Your friend will just have to pick her moment to slip away more carefully.” He hesitates before adding. “Are you still taking that transfer shuttle to NeuroOne?”
“I have no choice. Velkan will be on it.”
“The shuttle will return to the collective from NeuroOne tonight. You’ll only have eight hours there. Ayma’s doing everything she can to crack the security on the neural network,” Phin says quietly. “If she can’t pull it off, she won’t be able to transfer you to a shift at NeuroOne.”
“Is she making any progress?” I ask.
“Not yet,” Phin replies. “But she won’t sleep until she does, I can guarantee you that.”
“We have to go,” I say. “I’ll stay in touch as much as possible.”
Phin disconnects and I sink back against the side of the building. “Time to remove our tags.”
Solina’s face blanches.
“You can do mine first,” I say. “I’ll let you know if it hurts.”
I wince when her fingers grip my earlobe to hold it steady, but the detagger does its job with barely a pinch. Reassured, Solina hands it to me and I quickly remove her tag and then stuff the tool and both tags into the laundry duct.
“Now, it’s a waiting game,” I say, pulling out the extra guard uniform.
“What are you doing with that?” Solina asks.
I stuff it inside my jacket. “I may need it to rescue my friend from NeuroOne.”
Solina drops her gaze. “The robot military has a heavy presence at NeuroOne. You’ll never get him out.”
I squeeze her arm. “Don’t worry about me. There are ways around the robot military.”
Solina gives a weak grin, but her eyes still hold a frown. She thinks I’ll be terminated along with Velkan and that she’s never going to see me again, but she doesn’t know what Ayma’s capable of.
We spend the next couple of hours patrolling around the housing quarters, but we don’t wander far from the main gate. We can’t run the risk of missing our transports.
When dawn breaks with a less-than-welcoming rusty tinge, Solina and I lock eyes. “This is where we part ways,” I say. “Give Rennan my regards when you see him.”
“You can tell him yourself when you get back.” Solina pats me awkwardly on the shoulder before heading off in the direction of the foraging transport vehicle parked by the prep kitchen.
I take a quick steadying breath and walk off in the opposite direction to the front gate where the sleek charcoal transport shuttle that will take Velkan and me to NeuroOne is parked.
Two other guards are already waiting by the transfer shuttle. Their gazes flicker briefly to me before they turn their attention back to the workers loading crates into the shuttle. I watch as a worker wheels a gurney over and parks it at the curb. My knees almost give way beneath me. Is it Velkan? As I draw nearer, it takes all my willpower to force my face to remain expressionless when all I want to do is run to him. A gray-haired sallow-complexioned woman in a lab coat appears and takes up a position by the gurney, blocking my view of the occupant’s face.
I try to look disinterested when the worker pushes the gurney up a short ramp into the shuttle. Despite my resolve, everything swims out of focus for a moment when I see a pale and lifeless Velkan lying atop it. His full lips have taken on a strange bluish tinge, but the thing that frightens me most is the thick white bandage around his head. Surely they haven’t already begun extracting proteins from his brain. The collective isn’t equipped to carry out the procedure. But they could have taken a sample. That would explain the doctor-in-waiting. My stomach knots. I desperately want to run up the ramp and wrap my arms around Velkan, or better still, take the gurney and flee with him, but it would accomplish nothing. Instead, I adopt an even more steely expression than before and tear my gaze away from him.
Once the workers finish loading, the gray-haired doctor gestures to us to board the shuttle. I take a seat next to the other two guards. They stare fixedly in front of them, avoiding my gaze. It’s impossible to tell what they’re thinking. Whether or not they were expecting me on this rotation, they show no surprise at my presence.
My stomach roils as the doctor takes a seat at the front of the shuttle next to the gurney. I don’t know what she’s done to Velkan, but I know what they’re planning to do to him at NeuroOne. I need to rescue him before that happens, but how?
The shuttle shudders and moves off toward the main gate. It slows down momentarily to allow the gate to recede into the ground, before picking up speed. I stare out the window as the collective shrinks behind us. Butterflies crowd my stomach as the spiked ridge along the top of the steel gate rises up. The last frontier. We’re en route to the dark heart of Preeminence—NeuroOne. My throat feels parched with fear. We wanted to infiltrate Preeminence, but this wasn’t how we planned to do it, with one of us disguised as a guard and the other one unconscious.
The journey to NeuroOne takes close to three hours. We travel due east, the terrain growing increasingly boggy, the air thick with mist, until we arrive at a remote location dominated by a gleaming, circular steel-and-glass building. Behind it a long, windowless concrete structure stretches out as far as the eye can see. Everything about it is disturbing, and already my brain is wrestling with images of what might lurk inside.
The shuttle engine switches off and the gray-haired doctor gathers up her belongings. “Bring the subject to the electron cooling chambers in the processing plant,” she says and disembarks without as much as a second glance at us.
One of the guards stands and unlocks the brakes on Velkan’s gurney. “I’ll take it,” I say, gripping the metal frame.
The guard shrugs and turns his attention to the worker robots resembling miniature all-terrain vehicles that are pouring in to unload the crates. The sight of the robots sends shards of frozen fear through me. An ominous reminder that I am entering Preeminence’s lair.
“Where to?” I call to the guard, trying to strike a casual note even though I detect a tremor in my voice. It’s killing me to see Velkan lying here motionless, not knowing if I’ll ever hear his voice again.
A perturbed look flits across the guard’s face. “Don
’t you remember anything from training?”
“I was sick for part of it,” I throw back at him. “Missed the protocol for transfers.”
The guard gives a disgruntled sigh. “I’ll come with you and walk you through this one.”
He helps me unload the gurney—more roughly than I’d like—and I follow him down a sweeping path that circles around behind the impressive steel-and-glass building and leads to the long, windowless concrete structure. A pungent marshy odor hangs in the air. The equally sickening feeling in my gut tells me we are headed to the processing plant.
My fears are confirmed a moment later when we go through a steel entry cage guarded by a robot sentry who scans our IDs and waves us through with an oddly lifelike flick of his metallic wrist. The foyer is devoid of any signs of life, or sound—a mausoleum disturbed only by the wheels of the gurney gliding down the tile hallway.
We pass through double swinging doors and my knees almost buckle beneath me at the sight that greets us. On either side of the hallway are glass exhibits, each occupied by inhabitants who shuffle aimlessly around the cramped spaces, their bewildered motions a reflection of the confusion in their brains, or what is left of them.
I swallow back the bile surging up my throat and focus on pushing the gurney faster. My hands are shaking so hard I’m forced to bury them beneath the sheet to hide them. Military robots stand at attention by each observation window, their jointed steel frames and plasma weapons a glaring reminder that Preeminence is in control here, and that one false move could result in my elimination.
I throw a sidelong glance at one of the robots and immediately regret it. Its red laser gaze follows me the rest of the way through the macabre observation gallery. Nausea rises up inside me. I wonder how much it knows about me. Does it sense I’m an imposter? Is it measuring elevated levels of cortisone in my blood and sending it through the neural network to Preeminence for analysis? Or maybe it has the authority to eliminate a threat without consulting the insidious application. Sweat beads on my forehead. I could be terminated at any minute, while Velkan continues on in some mindless existence, feeding the knowledge base of a monster.
We exit the gallery through another set of swinging doors and I breathe out a sigh of relief to see that the glass rooms on either side of this hallway are offices.
“Wait here,” the guard says. “I need to check which electron cooling chamber we’re taking him to.” He disappears into one of the offices and starts talking to the guard seated at the workspace.
“Zero, gamma,” I whisper.
“Where are you?” Ayma asks.
“I’m in the processing plant with Velkan.”
She says nothing for a long moment and then in a trembling voice asks. “Is it bad?”
I grit my teeth. “More gruesome than you can imagine, and I haven’t seen the worst of it, yet. Did you find a way past the firewall?”
“Not yet, but I did locate an anomaly.”
“What does that mean?”
“I found a vulnerability in the network I can use to penetrate Preeminence.”
21
My head spins as I struggle to grasp what she’s saying. “Are you sure?” I say in a hushed tone. “I thought Preeminence was invincible.”
“No code is ever truly invincible.” Her voice drops. “Now, I just need to find an open port and tap into the neural network.”
“Does that mean you can transfer me to a position at NeuroOne?” I ask, my mind racing as I think through my next steps. If I don’t have to go back on that shuttle to the collective, I can figure out a way to rescue Velkan tonight.
“I hope so. I’ll get right on it,” Ayma replies. “How’s Velkan doing?”
“He’s sedated and his head’s bandaged. I think they ran some kind of tests on him.”
“So the tests were done at the collective?” Ayma asks.
“Yes, he was unconscious when they wheeled him onto the shuttle.”
“I can access those test results and change the results to inconclusive,” Ayma says. “That way they’ll have to run them again before they begin protein extraction. It will buy us some time to figure out how to get him out of there.”
“This way,” the guard calls to me, as he exits the office and gestures down the corridor.
“Gotta go, Ayma,” I whisper. I deactivate my MicroComm and steer the gurney down the dimly lit hallway after the guard. He stops about halfway down and directs me into a refrigerated, sterile room, washed in a haunting green light.
“Why’s it so cold in here?” I ask.
“They need to chill the brain before they begin the extraction process,” the guard replies.
My heart sinks. If Ayma doesn’t alter those test results soon, it might be too late to save Velkan. Tears prickle my eyes as I tuck the thin sheet tighter around his legs. If ever he needed his jumpsuit, it’s now. Only a corpse would be comfortable in here.
“Let’s go,” the guard says, with an impatient wave.
“Where to now?” I ask.
He throws me an exasperated look. “Back to the shuttle of course. We’re transfer crew only.” He raises a brow. “Suits me just fine. This place creeps me out. Be thankful this is as far as we go.”
Panic ricochets through me. “I thought the shuttle didn’t leave until tonight?”
“Schedule change,” the guard replies. “They notified me when I was in the office.”
My heart thumps as I follow him back down the eerie observation gallery. I try to steady my breathing as we approach the robot sentry at the entry. My stress levels are rapidly billowing out of control. If Ayma needs more time to issue my transfer, I’ll be sent back to the collective—and there’s nothing I can do from there to save Velkan.
The robot scans my ID and then directs me aside with a hinged wave of its arm. “New orders, wait here.”
The guard from the shuttle throws me a startled look, then quickens his pace as he walks out the door leaving me to my fate—reluctant to get caught up in it.
The robot sentry hands me a printout with my new orders, then points a metal finger at the imposing glass building opposite us. “Report for auxiliary orientation.” Its jaw moves up and down in a gnashing motion as it articulates each word. A primal fear takes hold of me. I’m about to get myself into a situation that none of the skills I honed on Cwelt prepared me for.
“Thank you,” I say, glancing down at the printout with a certain measure of relief that I’ve been assigned to the gleaming steel and glass structure. I’m not sure I could work in the processing plant after what I’ve seen of it so far. But I don’t have much to celebrate. I’m leaving Velkan alone and vulnerable in an electron cooling chamber—one step away from protein extraction. For now, I have to entrust him to Ayma and believe that she can stall the process before anything irreversible happens to him.
I wrinkle up my nose at the vile odor of stagnant water as I exit the processing plant. Everything about this place repulses me, inside and out. The stench of evil permeates it. I cross a narrow bridge over a foul-smelling marsh and make my way along a stone pathway toward the imposing circular building up ahead where the dark neural network of Preeminence resides.
My eyes widen when I step inside a gleaming marble foyer, the floor so white that I can see the reflection of my face and the unfamiliar dark hair that frames it. A robot sentry extends a long, metal hand for my ID. I shudder when the laser in its eye runs a beam over my credentials before handing the ID back to me and waving me through with an ominous click of a powerful wrist that could easily snap my arm in two.
I take a tentative step forward, staring in awe at the perfectly aligned row of ornate fabric flags along the walls, each featuring the inquiring eye of Preeminence in glittering silver and gold threads at the center of an intricate network of neurons. My throat closes over with fear. Is the application watching me even now?
A girl about my age dressed in ivory-colored scrubs clips across the marble floor and introduces herself
as Lira. “I’ve been assigned to handle your orientation,” she says, her lips barely parting as she spits out the words. I take a closer look at her to reassure myself that this emotionless specimen is not an android.
“I’m Trattora.” I smile at her, but as impossible as it seems, her face tightens even more, her features taking on an unmistakably sour edge.
“You would be advised to follow the protocol outlined in training and remember that emotions are superfluous to duty,” she retorts. “Your left wrist, please.”
Tentatively, I stretch out my hand, wincing as she slaps a tight metal clasp around it.
“Your CipherSync. Use it to record unusual activity during your shifts, and any observations you choose to add. The information is uploaded and analyzed at the end of every day.” She lets my hand drop with an air of contempt. “I will conduct your introductory tour of the facility. This afternoon, you will meet the department you have been assigned to.”
“Which department is that?” I ask as I fall into step behind her. She marches briskly over to an elevachute, depresses the call button and stares at me coldly. “You will be working directly under the head of research here at NeuroOne as a research auxiliary.” She runs her eyes over me like a cat sharpening its claws on a tree. “You must be well connected to have procured that position—an unusually rapid promotion for a collective guard.”
I fix a blank expression on my face. Apparently, she had her eye on my position, and in a few keystrokes Ayma obliterated her chances. I blink politely. I can play her game. “Regrettably, protocol does not allow me to divulge such details.”
A flash of fury lights up Lira’s face, but she quickly turns away and waits for the elevachute to open. We ride up to the first floor in a charged silence. Lira exits the elevachute and immediately launches into a well-rehearsed spiel. “Dining facilities are on this level. You will accompany the head of research to the upper management cafeteria, but will remain on duty throughout all meals.” She pauses as if to give weight to the fact that we are only here to serve.
“Why do we need to record unusual activity on our CipherSyncs?” I ask. “Doesn’t Preeminence extract enough information from the cameras everywhere?” I gesture up at the motion-activated camera following our movements.
Girl of Stone (The Expulsion Project Book 2) Page 16
