Crash Flux 1: Welcome To The Machine (6 page)

Burk said, “I don’t know, but they are heading straight for your office Raydin.  Better get out of there.”

Raydin wired, “Adon, are the accounts ready yet?”

Adon texted, “I need another tick.”

Raydin felt the implant in his right arm twitch.  The snake flew out of his wrist, the tiny mechanical dart turning in mid air and rounding the corner, carrying behind it a thin silver filament.  It hovered in the air outside the door to the office, flying silently on micro air-jets.  The tip retracted to reveal a camera lens.  Linked directly to his C-MAX, it showed two men walking down the hallway towards the office.  The men were armed with needle guns, which they wielded with their barcoded hands.

Raydin retracted the snake back into his forearm, and wired Burk.  “I need more time!”

Burk said, “Hang on boss.”  Burk took a pair of wire-cutters and cut into the tangled mess beneath the floor.  He attached a wire to his Quebic deck and ran the command sequence through the buildings security system.  White gas erupted from the ceilings throughout the building, fire-control system trying to smother the nonexistent flames.  “That should buy you some time.”

Raydin pushed on the window, and it came off with a pop of escaping air, the fire-control system releasing the locks on the windows.  He tossed it aside and looked out the window.  To the side, he saw a shattered window, where the jumper had been earlier that day.  Raydin looked back towards the door, then stuck his body out the window.  He fired his snake into the wall above the window, to the side.  It embedded itself into the chitin, and the grapple system sent the anchor spikes through the material.  He gave the wire a few good tugs, then swung out the window, running his feet across the side of the building.  He stretched and reached for the corner of the window frame, the tips of his fingers brushing across it.  He held onto his tenuous grip with one hand, staring down at the people below, his tie flapping in the wind.  H struggled to pull him self up and got a leg around the opening, trying not to cut himself on the sharp polymer window.

He ducked behind an office and watched as the z-men fanned out in opposite directions, away from him.  “It’s now or never, Adon.  If we are going to do this, we’ve got to do it now!” he wired.

Adon texted, “The accounts are all set up.  ”

Raydin made a break for the elevator.  He wired, “Screw ‘em.  Let’s green-light this fucker.  Burk, on my signal, cut the power to the lights and the security camera’s!”  He ran into the glass elevator running up the side of the building waiting for the exact moment when the elevator opened and said, “Now!”  The power went down and lights all turned off.  He ran inside the elevator and pressed the button.  He went down a few floors, until one of the z-men spotted him through the glass tube.  He fired on Raydin, and Raydin hunched down in the corner as the ferrous needles pierced the elevator shaft went flying overhead.  Raydin wired, “Cut the auxiliary power to the lights!”  The z-man looked up as the lights went off and the elevator hurried its descent to the bottom floor.

The elevator shut down, leaving him between floors.  He wired Burk, “Get this elevator moving again!”  Raydin was still connected to the system through the main office.  Still sitting in the elevator, he jacked back into the simulation, standing once again at the control station overlooking the data block.  He shoved somebody out of the way and pushed the big green button on the console.  The cube of lightning was disassembled as if he had pressed the fast forward button, dissected into millions of little cubes before his eyes, each one being processed faster than the speed of light by the spire.  The cubes shuffled down the assembly line, being replaced by another and another, quicker than the eye could see.

From Raydin’s point of view inside the control room, the data block exploded in a kaleidoscope of colors.  Parts of the bloc became black while other warped and twisted.  Forms whipped through the simulation, taking on a life of their own. Graphical error’s seemed to pulsate, stretching outwards towards the control station. A tendril of light whipped towards him.  Raydin gasped, sending a signal to jack out of the processing bay.  The tendril ripped through his simulated profile before he could pull out.  Raydin’s body and face twitched for a few seconds.  His nose began to bleed, and he blacked out.

He went into a trance.  Inside the trance, he heard voices, reverberating through his mind, speaking to him in a language he could not understand.  He awoke with a shock, the forceful disconnect from VR disrupting his C-MAX’s delicate circuitry.

Raydin shook his head.  The elevator was moving again.  He shouted over his C-MAX, “What the hell just happened?”

Everybody began talking all at once.  Adon yelled back over the static, “My eyespike just got fried!”  Irule said, “The hotwire is lighting up, bouncing data all over the Hub!” Burk said, “The security system’s freaking out!”

Raydin stood up, gasping, “What the fu-?”  Outside, he could see the office lights of the neighboring building pulsating, moving up and down in columns, like ones and zeros down a scroll bar.  He wired, “What’s the status on our account balance?  Did it go through?”

Adon texted, “Give me a second.  Raydin, you’re not going to believe this.  Our account is at thirteen trillion credits and rising.”

Irule wired, “We don’t have time for this.  Those suits just shut down the hotwire, and have quarantine the entire office.  I barely made it out of there.  We need to get the hell out of here.”

Raydin said, “Alright.  Adon, liquidate our accounts and let’s get the hell out of here.” He made a quick check of the hypercomp’s security system.  He wired, “It looks like whatever was in that data block corrupted the register too.  Burk, shut down the power grid then signal the alarm, keep auxiliary power flowing for the elevators until I reach you.”

Raydin switched his C-MAX’s comjack off with a thought.  The elevator neared the bottom floor.  He looked up at the buildings around him.  Throughout the sector lights fluctuated on and off in undulating patterns, dancing to an unknown rhythm.

  He took a moment to fathom the chaos and thought, “What have I gotten us into?”

Big Trouble

Chapter 1 

Welcome To The Machine

Tools lay scattered all over the basement sub level.  The hum of the generators masked Raydin’s approach, as Burk and the others worked quickly to open the grate beneath them.  Startled, Adon whirled around, and he felt the long, hydraulic spike implanted in his wrist pierce the artificial skin, near the base of the back of his hand. He held it upwards towards the blinking light in the ceiling, then retracted the blade as he recognized his friend’s face.

Raydin said, “Where the hell did you get that thing?” 

Adon said, “Chop-Shop.  The Wasteland can be a rough place”

Burk said, “You were a wastelunder?”

Adon said, “It was a long time ago, I was very young.  We can talk about it later.”  Irule finished picking up the last of the tools lying on the ground.  Burks cutting laser sliced through the last bolt holding it in place, and everyone lined up behind him.  Burk lifted the huge grate beneath his feet, and Adon crawled down into the ventilation shaft below.  Burk went next, followed by Raydin, then Irule who closed the grate behind her.

The shaft was big enough that they could almost walk through it, about a meter and a half, and they were making good time on their hands and knees.   Adon shivered as he was hit by a blast of cold air, and said, “The safe house is close by, it’s a tiny room in a residential complex.”

“How come it’s empty?” Raydin asked.

“Domestic homicide.  It’s in legal limbo until the case is processed.  The investigation is over, there is nobody there for the time being.”

Burk said, “We have about thirty ticks until the cleaners come.  If we get caught while we are in the vents, we will be burned alive.”

Raydin said, “Before I met you, I always used to think those were an urban legend.  You sure you know the cleaning drones patrol routes?”

Burk said, “Yeah, if we stick to our escape route we should be fine.”

Irule said, “Those drones give me the creeps.  When I was a paramedic, sometimes people used to find kids who died playing in the vents.  They were burnt from head to toe, it made me kind of wish they had never found them.  After a couple of days, their ashes just got swept up through the shaft and carried away, no trace.”

Raydin said, “Why don’t you give me the VR address of the ventilation system for this area?  I might as well keep updated on their position.”

Burk said, “Suit yourself, but its pretty much a waste of time.  You see those rails above us?  The drones are on a preprogrammed track, suspended from the ceiling.  They are as regular as clockwork.”

Raydin ignored him and uploaded the map.  He overlaid the map over his vision and highlighted his position in green, and the safe house in red.  He highlighted all the nearby exits in yellow, and mapped out the drones’ routes in blue, with each of the drones appearing as moving blue dots.  As Burk had said, they were all far away from their position.

Raydin cursed himself for not going over the contingency plan in his final run-through before the broadcast.  “How are we going to get into the safe house again?”

Adon said, “There is a grate beneath an elevator shaft.  There are no camera’s there, and we should be able to get to the room from the shaft without drawing too much attention.”

Irule goosed Raydin, causing him to slam his head into the top of the vent.  “God damn it Irule!”  He touched the tender part of his head, inhaled sharply and said, “Ah!”  Irule snickered.  

Adon laughed and shook his head.  “Some girls just can’t take a hint…”

Raydin leaned back against the side of the vent and said, “Hold up, the drones seem to be changing their patrol sweeps…”  Raydin’s uplink to the ventilation system turned to confetti, multi-colored static and a high pitched whine of a dead link mixing with his perceptions of the tunnels all around him.

Raydin said, “Burk, are you sure the cameras crashed before we left the building?”

Burk said, “Yeah.  Everything they had recorded was completely corrupted, it should take them at least a month to put the pieces back together.  Why?”

“Because those drones are heading for our position.”

Adon said, “What?  How?”

Burk said, “Somebody could have been monitoring the sensors at the cross-vents, but I don’t see how-”

Raydin said, “We don’t have time.  Get Moving!  Maybe we can outrun them.”

They continued crawling through the vent, feeling the temperature inside rising as the drones got closer.  Irule turned around and said, “There is one behind us!”

Adon said, “We’re coming up on a cross-section!”

Raydin said, “We have got another one coming up from the left.  Burk, you have any ideas?”

Burk said, “Just get past that junction up ahead!”

Irule scrambled forward, stopping for only an instant to look behind her.  The small opening in front of the drone seemed to have two, glowing, red hot pincers, and burning hot air wafted up from its gaping maw.  She saw the drone’s boxy, streamlined frame gaining on her heels, and quickened her pace.  She scrambled past the cross-vents and looked to the left, to see another drone, much closer than the one behind her, heading straight for her.  Burk pushed past her and yelled, “Move!”

Burk pulled one of the levers near the track, grabbed Irule’s hand, and ducked to the vent to her right.  The drone coming towards them suddenly veered to their left, following the track towards the other drone.  Irule looked down the corridor just in time to see the burst of superheated air from both of the drones flare as they collided in a heap of twisted metal.  A roar of flames echoed down the corridor.  The fire started to melt the bottom of the vent, when one of the drones sparked, and sent a wave of fire down the corridor as Irule ducked behind the cross-vent.  A small metal plate came down between her and the cross-section, glowing red hot as the heat from the explosion seared the safety barrier.

Adon banged on the safety barrier.  “Irule!  Burk!  You there?”

Irule said, “Yeah, we’re fine, but we are going to have to find a way around!”

Raydin said, “Just a tick, I’ll upload the map to your C-MAX.”

Irule put her thumb to her temple, as she often did when using the comjack.  The image blipped, then shimmered, finally winking out.  She wired him a thought relay.  “Raydin?  What happened?”

Raydin said, “Shit!  I’m cut off!  Seems like your comm- (skkzzT) being jammed- (skkzzT) damn It!”  She heard the last part out loud as Raydin banged his fist against the side of the vent and yelled through the safety barrier.

Adon yelled, “We are on manual.  Try to make your way in between two cross sections and seal yourself in between the ventilation corridors.  We’ll try to figure something out later.”

Raydin followed Adon down the rusted vents, wincing as his shin rested painfully on the cross brace, crawling over the solid metal liner, feeling the bolts dig into his skin.  They made it to a cross-section and Adon started struggling with the controls.  Raydin looked to the left and said, “You sure you know how to work those?”

Adon said nothing, grunted, and pulled the lever free of its rusted casing.  Part of the track on the cross section to their left veered directly towards them.  “Give me a minute, I’ll get it.”  Raydin took another look down the vent and saw a drone round the corner.  “No time!”  They scuttled down the vent, with the drone right behind them.  Adon turned around and Raydin said, “Were not going to make it!”

Adon popped his hydraulic spike, jamming it in between one of the rusted tracks.  It grated against the rusted metal, shaving away flakes of ruddy iron as he leveraged his body painfully against the spike, feeling the twist of his arm as it gave way.  The rail seemed to snap, and Adon pushed Raydin up the vent ahead of him.  He turned around just in time to see the drone veer off the track and get impaled on the errant rail.  Brilliant fire blazoned the sides of the vent, and Adon could feel the heat coming from the drone as it was blowing through the ventilation shaft in waves.