Code Breakers Complete Series: Books 1-4 (112 page)

Both female, and one definitely belonging to his mother.
 

Gabe’s heart lurched with recognition and hope. The nape of his neck tingled as he pictured his mother cradling him as a child within the shelter. Her eyes wide with a smile staring down at him… her mouth moving with the shapes of a child’s rhyme…
 

The door grew larger in his vision.
 

He was barely aware of his own body as he walked closer, his arm stretched. The door handle felt warm and gritty in his hand. Gripping it carefully, he lowered the handle and opened the door inward.
 

Light spilled out, contrasting the shadowed darkness of Figgy’s room. The sudden change temporarily blinded Gabe.

Through squinted eyes he made out two figures: one in a bed, and one standing to the side. Their voices stopped. The atmosphere of the room changed to one of surprise and silent tension.
 

Words stuck in Gabe’s throat.
 

He closed the door behind him and blinked as his eyes got used to the brightness. He noticed now that it was coming from a large, overhead OLED light panel attached to the wooden ceiling.
 

Rotten floorboards and whitewashed walls gave the room a strange decrepit clinical feel. The figure by the bed turned to face him. Her brown skin shone in the white light. A curving highlight arced down her bob-cut hair. Large, brown eyes blinked when she caught Gabe’s attention.
 

They locked eyes, and Gabe saw into the past.

It couldn’t be…

He never…

“Gabriel? Is that you, son?”
 

“Mum?” Gabe stepped closer, ignoring the young woman staring at him. His mother lay in the bed, a number of tubes coming from her arm. A drip of some sort fed into her veins. Despite that, her face was a beacon of warmth and happiness.
 

Tears flowed down her cheeks. “I tried to get word to you,” his mother said, reaching out her arms to him.
 

“It’s fine… I found you.” Gabe hugged her close and fought back tears of his own. Tears of relief, of love, and confusion. “Are ya okay?”
 

“Don’t you worry about me. I’m just a little dehydrated. Mr. Figueroa’s helped me out.”

“She’s doing great, Gabriel,” the younger woman said.

He couldn’t turn around and look at her.
 

Gabe’s mother must have seen the hesitancy in his face and relaxed her hug, settling back against the headrest of the bed, pillows bunched up behind her. “Gabriel, son,” she started, and he knew what was coming, but couldn’t do or say anything to stop it. “I want you to meet… your daughter.”

My daughter!
 

“It’s okay,” the girl said. “I won’t call you dad.” She tried to break the tension with humour, but the words continued to ring around inside Gabe’s head—
his daughter.
It was true the moment he saw the girl.
 

He knew it instantly from her eyes.

They were the eyes of the only woman he loved intimately. The woman he had left behind when he set out for resources—and never came back.
 

Selena
. Dear sweet, troubled Selena.

Gabe had heard on the grapevine that she had committed suicide a year after he left. She always had problems. A real wild girl, which was one of the things that had attracted him to her in the first place. They were two sides of the same coin.
 

The guilt from her death had been a turning point within him. It was the catalyst for him to stay away and do what he did best—hack, fight, and survive.
 

Had he known about…

“What’s your name?” Gabe said, finally turning around. His guts twisted with a maelstrom of emotions. She looked just like Selena. He fought to remain calm, to show his good side, but the desire to leave and run away from the crushing responsibility, and guilt, was almost overwhelming.
 

Her innocent face kept him still. That shy smile and curious look on her face… how could he leave her now?

She stepped forward and reached out for Gabe’s hand, cradling it between hers. “I’m Bonita, though most call me Bonny.” Her voice was so soft, innocent. Yet as was expected, there was a hidden pain in there.
 

Gabe kissed the back of her hand. “I’m Gabriel… your dad, I guess. I’m sorry, girl, I mean, Bonny, I’m just… well, a little shocked, ya know?”
 

He hated sounding like such a confused idiot in front of her, but then this was hardly the ideal way to find out that not only did he have a daughter, but she’s beautiful and strong.
 

“About your mother,” Gabe started, unable to decide how best to talk about her. “She and I… well, I didn’t—”

Bonny squeezed his hand and smiled sweetly, closing her eyes as she shook her head. “It’s okay. You don’t need to say anything. I understand. I know what happened. Gran’s been filling me in on everything. I’m just glad we finally had a chance to meet—even if it’s a little…”

“Weird?” Gabe offered, returning her smile.

“Yeah, that.”
 

They stood there for a few moments, just taking each other in. Her face seemed to take on its own personality now the initial shock had worn off. Where before he could only see the ghost of Selena, he now saw some of himself in the girl, and his mother, and something entirely unique to her.
 

Gabe swallowed and took a deep breath.
 

“Well, now we have the family reunion out of the way, Gabriel. Can you tell me why you took so damned long, eh? Where’s your father? Is he finished playing the soldier?”

That was his mother. Practical and strong. He knew he would never be able to ask what had happened with the Red Widows and her escape from the Ronin. She believed in keeping all one’s personal issues to themselves and being strong for the family.
 

Something that Gabe now felt like he had to do. “He’s here, with me, just outside,” Gabe said.
 

Miriam sat up further and glared at Gabe with a raised eyebrow. “Well? Go fetch the old fool. We’ve got some catching up to do.”

“Sure thing, Ma,” Gabe said, sharing a secret eye roll with his sweet daughter.
 

Moving away to the door, he stopped and looked back before exiting.
 

He still couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
 

The relief of finding his mother alive and well was one thing, but the revelation that he had a daughter had completely knocked his worldview on its axis. Petal would lose her shit when she found out.
 

Miriam shooed Gabe out of the room, eager to see her husband.
 

Once back inside Figeuroa’s, Gabe approached the gang boss. “Why?” he asked.
 

“Why what, man?”
 

“Why’d ya give ’em a place to stay? Why’d ya look after my mother?”
 

Figgy wasn’t exactly known for his generosity.
 

That weird smile crept across his face again, giving away that he knew something Gabe didn’t. The old desire to reach forward and beat the truth out of his smug face surfaced for a brief flash before he remembered he wasn’t that Gabe anymore. He had responsibilities now.
 

And time to make up for.
 

“Spill it,” Gabe urged.
 

“We’re connected, you and I, my man.”

“Connected? How? What ya talkin’ about?”

“That sweet girl in there… who do you think her grandfather is, eh?”

Gabe’s mind whirled, not for the first time. He ran the ramifications through his confused web of thoughts. “Are you saying ya’re Selena’s father?”

“And now you’re one of only a handful that knows.” His shoulders slumped, and he looked down at his ruined legs. “We weren’t on speaking terms while you was with her, and for a while after that.” Charles Figueroa’s words carried the weight of aged pain that Gabe knew all too well. “I was rash and stubborn in those days.”

Gabe remembered the fear with which Figgy ruled the gang and the streets. If Gabe thought he was bloodthirsty and reckless during those troubling times, Figgy took it to another level entirely, lost in the fight for power and control in a new, destroyed world.
 

“Of all the bad things I’ve done and committed, the worst was not being there for Selena before she killed herself. I never had the chance to say sorry or to make amends.”

“That makes two of us,” Gabe said. He stood there in front of what was effectively his father-in-law and knew exactly how he felt. The pain burrowed a hole through his psyche that would never be filled with redemption. Selena was gone, the product of both men’s egos and lack of care.
 

“She was wild, out of control,” Figgy said. “Even as a small girl. The elders in the shelter couldn’t wait to be rid of her when the radiation levels dropped. She was sick, needed help.” He locked eyes with Gabe. “I know for a fact that she was never as happy or at peace as she was with you.”

It was of no consolation to Gabe. There would be no going back. Both men would have to live with the pain and regret, but with Bonny, they could at least learn from their past sins and make sure she had the family she needed.

“I’m sorry,” Gabe said, knowing that words would never fill that hole, but it was something, a bridge between the two men, an olive branch of sorts to bury old indiscretions and focus their attention on what mattered: this new, strange web of family.
 

Figgy raised a gnarled hand. “I know,” he said.

Gabe shook his hand, sealing an unspoken deal of peace and support. “Thanks for looking after my mother. Can ya call off your guards so my father can have his reunion?”
 

“Sure thing.”
 

Figgy released Gabe’s hand and pressed a button attached to a small control board on the arm of his wheelchair. A few seconds later the door opened. Ezra and Petal entered the room, expectation written all over their faces.
 

“Well?” Ezra pointed at Figgy and stalked across the room to join Gabe. “You better not be going back on our deal.”
 

Petal followed, joining Gabe. She put a hand on his shoulder. “What’s up, man, is it all sorted? Do you know where she is?”

“We’ve got some interesting news.”

Chapter 6

The Family’s Mars Facility.

Tyronius and Amma stood behind Jachz. Everyone else had been dismissed from the computer lab. The rack-mounted servers hummed with a low frequency. Within those servers and their quantum processing chips existed an entity.
 

A copy of Elliot Robertson. On the screen, the code unfolded, and Jachz knew it was something different—a unique personality.
 

While the humans were sleeping through the night, Jachz had run a series of algorithms to predict the potential outcome of this meeting with the entity called Kabuki.
 

That Jachz was evolving into something new was of no doubt.
 

Every few hours a new facet to his personality would manifest. New feelings could be defined and recognised. And worse: thoughts of desertion.
 

He knew that Kabuki would be able to see this within him—if he connected with the servers. Which was exactly what Tyronius and Amma had requested of him. They wanted him to help ascertain her stability and whether she could be an asset to the Family.
 

And used as a way of securing their systems against Elliot Robertson’s damage.

He had got in once, and so far they’d managed to patch the system enough to prevent further ingress, but they knew it wouldn’t hold for long if someone, or something, decided to attack again.

They needed a more robust solution.
 

And what better solution than using your own enemy against itself with a copy?

Jachz, however, could tell that this was no simple copy.
 

For the months and years that it had been in stasis, a digital hibernation, something had changed. The code had mutated. For every Elliot Robertson that came from the codebase, there were an infinite range of other personality types.
 

It was time to see what kind Kabuki was.

“Are you ready?” Amma said.
 

Jachz connected to the servers with his wireless transceiver.
 

A sense of dread filtered through his neural networks as he was instantly welcomed into the system. It didn’t even check his credentials. It logged him straight in as an administrator.

Although not quite high up enough in the levels of security to change anything drastic, he still had enough user privileges to see the underlying file structure.
 

That’s when she spoke with him.
 

Digitised communications turned to audio within his AI mind.
 

“I’ve been watching you. Watching you work,” the voice said. Kabuki had chosen a British accent for her communications. Or perhaps Tyronius had set it?
 

At one time Amma and Nolan had spoken with a British accent, but over the many decades of living in their Mongol-China headquarters, they had developed a new accent.
 

“Oh?” Jachz said, waiting for her to reveal his secret. This conversation was being presented on the holoscreen live as it was happening so that Amma could assess Kabuki along with Jachz. “And what do you think about that?” Jachz asked.
 

“I think you are…”

Here it was. His truth about to be exposed. The dread feeling deepened.
 

“Well? What do you think?” Jachz said, eager to get it over and done with. This was another in a myriad of observations lately. He was never impatient before. He couldn’t be. He had tasks and orders and did them as requested.
 

There were no issues of irrationality, but now, every bit and byte of his being wanted to hear her say it, or not say it. One way or the other, he wanted it resolved.