Code Breakers Complete Series: Books 1-4
Read Code Breakers Complete Series: Books 1-4 Online
Authors: Colin F. Barnes
Code Breakers Box Set
Books 1 - 4
By
Colin F. Barnes
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Book 1 - Alpha
In a post-apocalyptic future, humanity survives within a single domed city run by a shadowy benefactor known only as The Family. Each week the death lottery claims more lives and Gerry Cardle, head of the lottery, inexplicably finds himself the next on the list.
Something's wrong with the system. A deadly artificial intelligence has breached security. Gerry has just 7 days to live. Forced off the grid, Gerry has to do the unthinkable: willingly leave the city. What he finds in the abandoned lands will shatter his perception of what it means to be human. Everything he had been told before was a lie.
In a deadly world of conspiracies, Gerry has to sacrifice everything he loves in order to save it, and time is running out.
Book 2 - Beta
Being human is no longer enough.
The fanatical Red Widows sweep destruction across the abandoned lands. Their aggression threatens to destroy the city Gerry had risked his life to save. Petal, the woman Gerry has come to love is dying. The despotic cabal, The Family, demand he brings her to them, but she's missing, running from the Widows, searching for the truth of her origins before it's too late.
When their paths cross, Petal and Gerry will hold the fate of humankind in their hands—if they can survive the malevolent digital entity that stalks them from the shadows.
Book 3 - Gamma
Petal and Gabriel are forced to decide, as the mad, digital entity, Elliot Robertson, is determined to dominate the world. His influence, spread by an insurgent group, The Ronin, seeks to control and enslave the last of humanity.
With time running out, Petal and Gabriel must travel to the far reaches of the abandoned lands in order to repair a server they believe will be the key to defeating Elliot and his ronin. All the while, Petal has a ticking time bomb inside her head: Gerry Cardle’s uploaded consciousness. The code of which is mutating, but to what end?
Together with their few allies, Petal and Gabriel must face either victory or total annihilation.
Book 4 - Delta
Gabriel and Petal have tracked Gabe’s mother back to Hong Kong. But to find her Gabe has to face his old gang and the ghosts he thought he had laid to rest years before. While helping him, Petal stumbles on a way of getting Gerry’s mind out of her head, but like Gabe, she too has to return to a place full of ghosts: Libertas.
Enna is now the Prime Minister of the domed city, and when Petal arrives she discovers Enna has developed her transcendent technology. However, to give Gerry a new existence, they’ll need more help—help from someone within the Family.
Faced with shifting loyalties and an uncertain future, Petal and Gerry will for the last time face a dire threat to their existence when Jess is kidnapped by a shadowy figure. It’s a race against time to find her and uncover the conspiracy before the Family has the last laugh.
Chapter 1
City Earth, Northern Mongolia
In 2153 the lottery didn’t just change lives, it ended them. And Gerry Cardle’s numbers were up. Saturday morning and Gerry should have been at home with his family. Instead, in a mood that cast its own shadow, he walked through the ten-metre-high archway to Cemprom, the largest company in City Earth.
Being at work on the weekend never seemed right. It still had a low-level hum of productivity as hundreds of drone men and women rode glass escalators and busied themselves with etiquette, but the ferocious capitalism of a weekday was stymied by the ephemeral qualities of a Saturday. They weren’t really trying. It was as if the day on the calendar signalled a different mind-set. Gave them a reason to divert from their usual routine, albeit in minuscule ways. One couldn’t divert too far from routine in City Earth.
The calmness appealed to him. He tried to cling to it in a vain attempt at quelling the anxiety that slithered through his nerve centre.
He approached the reception desk as usual, his suit neatly pressed by his wife, a fabric bangle around his left wrist that Marcy, his youngest daughter, made for him. Only today he was on edge. Those damned Death Lottery numbers haunted him. He shouldn’t be a winner. It was impossible.
They were waiting for him in his inbox earlier that morning, flashing away in his internal mind-interface as if they were mocking him. The term ‘winner’ held a cruel irony that he could never get over. Still, it was just a mistake. It’d get fixed. He knew there would be some logical explanation. He just had to see his boss and sort it all out.
It wasn’t right that someone like Gerry, one of the first on the exemption list, should be eligible for the D-Lottery. It must be something simple like a glitch or a bug in the system. That thought, however, was of little consolation. Gerry was the architect of the algorithm that was used to determine the ‘winners’, after all. If there was something wrong with the system, it was his responsibility.
How a bug could have got into the system he couldn’t know. Only yesterday he and his colleagues performed a maintenance procedure on City Earth’s network. It was clean.
Maybe the glitch was hidden? Someone fiddling with parts of the system on the inside. But who?
Probably Jasper. A snot-nosed, privileged automaton sent down from the Family to report on efficiency and morale, which was redundant. Like anyone displayed anything other than perfect satisfaction. The Family provided a system to cater for every whim and desire, after all. His Artificial Intelligent Assistant dutifully noted the sarcasm. No doubt he would be receiving an internal psyche report later that evening. He’d just take the report and make a virtual paper plane out of it and throw it into the trash bin, where the AIA could choke on the misfiling.
Approaching the security desk, Gerry swiped his right wrist over a small red box. Inside, a laser scanner interfaced with his ID wrist-chip and the identification routine of his AIA to generate a unique security code. Without looking at Gerry, the barely interested receptionist dictated the resulting random number to the computer.
The computer bleeped twice.
“I’m sorry, sir. You don’t have access.”
Gerry was already making his way past the desk with his hand out for the gate when he stopped and turned. He thought he’d misheard. He’d been through this gate hundreds of times. He looked at the receptionist, trying to tell if he was being played for a fool.
The receptionist simply pointed to the red flashing warning on the holoscreen.
“Sir, you don’t have sufficient clearance. Please exit the building.”
The AIA must have registered Gerry’s D-Lottery status with the network already.
Gerry shook his head. Surely it had to be some kind of joke? He fully expected to see Jasper, or even his boss, giggling away in some corner. But the entrance area was empty apart from the well-groomed young man behind the desk. He sat bolt upright with perfect posture, black hair greased back in a slick, modern style. He arched a plucked eyebrow expectantly, as though he were someone important. All privilege, all class, but no skill or talent, just your typical City Earth oxygen thief—which made matters worse when oxygen was a managed resource.
“Steven, isn’t it?” Gerry said. “You went to school with my eldest daughter, Caitlyn. Surely you recognise me?”
“Your ID does not have the appropriate clearance,” he replied, still not engaging.
“Please. Just try again?” Gerry tugged at the bangle on his wrist, tapping his foot on the floor. Anything to remain calm, pleasant. He had to give the benefit of the doubt. The kid was just doing his job… tap, tap, tap.
