Code Breakers Complete Series: Books 1-4 (120 page)

“You’re not psychotic,” Holly said. “A little nuts, perhaps, but that only makes you
you
.”

“You say the sweetest things.”

Enna turned to face them, her face all business and serious. “Let’s get you prepped and set up on the operating table. You know the procedure from last time. Only difference today is we’ve got Jachz acting as the neural bridge and a brain that has enough capacity to take Gerry’s consciousness.”

“What are the risks?” Holly asked.

“Irreparable brain damage and death,” Jachz said, emotionless.

“Thanks for that,” Petal added. Rolling her eyes at Enna, she added, “You ought to teach this one some bedside manners.”

“I’m sorry, Petal. I didn’t mean to offend you. I was just answering honestly.”

“Yeah,” Holly said, “you remember that capacity to lie thing we mentioned? That would have been a good time. Pro tip, bro.”

Enna moved forward and took Petal by the shoulder. “Okay, we’re all a little nervous. Let’s get you set up and start the diagnostics.”
 

Petal gave Holly a wink before she turned to face the operating table.
 

It was just routine, she told herself. Just another techxorcist job. Only in reverse.

Petal sat down on the table and let Jachz connect with her via their neck ports. For a moment nothing happened, but then a force hit that made every muscle spasm, a bolt of white-hot electricity crashing into her system, turning everything black.

Chapter 12

In the physical world, Petal knew she was screaming. Yet, here in this strange realm of subconsciousness mixed with networked processing, she remained calm.
 

Jachz’s node existed somewhere in the binary ether, bridging the flow of code. Enna’s software program scanned Petal’s internal processors and data storage for Gerry’s mind, now converted to a complicated package of low-level subroutines.

The whole is where the consciousness and life came from, she saw that now. A massive globe of interconnected pieces of code and instructions intermingled like a hive of bees. Each routine having its own responsibilities and all contributing to the one central queen bee: the hub of Gerry.
 

Using Jachz’s systems as a bridge from Petal to the new, neurally empty transcendent brain, Enna’s software ported across all the code that made up Gerry.
 

Petal just had to concentrate on maintaining the connection.
 

The flood came faster and faster, threatening to overwhelm her and push beyond the boundaries of her bandwidth. But focussing on the instructions and their minutiae, she managed to tap into Jachz’s processing power, making the transfer faster and less painful.
 

The strangest of memories and thoughts bubbled up in flashes of incoherent images and portions of audio. The hive was breaking down, the various parts of Gerry being reduced to their constituent fragments as they were herded into data packets and sent across the network.
 

Despite the psychedelic show of distorted images and memories, Petal knew this was going better than the last time they attempted this. The first time an uncontrollable torrent of data crashed her systems and nearly destroyed Alpha’s processors.
 

Having a more intelligent and capable router, such as Jachz, kept the flow of data to a steady, but still incredibly fast-flowing stream.
 

As the transfer continued, Petal heard fragments of conversations with Gerry, saw images of him from the past. Images of Gerry helping her after she nearly died in the Spider’s Byte; Gerry sacrificing himself to defeat Jasper at the base of Cemprom’s server room; and the two of them merging for the first time in their battle with Elliot Robertson.
 

Then there were flashes of memory from his time on the Family’s space station. Petal heard him admit to his mother that he loved Petal, that he would return to Earth and find her.

The images came quicker and more fragmented, almost as if they were being deleted from her memory, but they were just ghosts her brain created as it processed the exodus of Gerry’s mind into the transcendent.
 

On and on it went. Petal lost her awareness during the transfer after about an hour, the river of data finally overwhelming her. When she finally came around, Enna, Holly and Jachz stood around her, their faces contorted, foreheads wrinkled.
 

Enna produced a syringe full of black, writhing liquid: ’Stem.
 

She felt a stab in her right arm, and the world became all fuzzy again.
 

“Sleep,” Enna said. “When you wake up in a couple of hours, you’ll feel better.”

Petal tried to speak, but her lips refused to follow the commands. It wasn’t just ’Stem she’d been injected with, but a sedative by the way she felt heavy and slow, her mind seemingly unable to cohere and work logically.
 

The image of Gerry looking at her from the tank was the last thing she saw before the drugs took over. She dreamed a void. Total and utter nothingness.
 

***

A series of bangs from behind Petal woke her. She opened her eyes and squinted against the harsh white light. Outside, the sun had set. She checked her internal clock. 21:00. She’d been under for more than just a couple of hours.
 

A dry patch in her throat made her cough when she tried to talk. A hand gripped her wrist and squeezed. “It’s okay,” Holly said. “You’re all good. Enna’s tests have confirmed it. No lasting damage at all. Jachz managed the transfer perfectly. Here, have some water.”

Holly’s smiling face blotted out the bright OLED light panels. Petal sat up and took the glass of water from her. She swallowed it greedily, downing the glass in one, washing away the sticky, oily aftertaste of ’Stem from her mouth and throat.
 

Her eyelids were still heavy after her deep sleep, but she could now at least feel her limbs.
 

“No damage?” she finally said.
 

“Nope, it went great.”

“Where’s—”

“We’re right here,” Enna said, approaching the table from Petal’s right. Jachz stood behind her, his face impassive. The server rack against the wall hummed loudly with excessive fan activity. Petal traced the cables to the rear of the lab. They entered a single transcendent’s tank full of blue water.
 

Inside, Gerry’s cloned body floated in the liquid, his arms hanging loosely in front of him. A breathing tube attached to his mouth and nostrils snaked out of the tank and into a large cylinder with a moving diaphragm. Petal squinted to focus… yes, she could see it. His chest was rising and falling.
 

“It worked?” Petal asked. “He’s breathing; that means it went okay, right?”

Enna didn’t say anything at first. The pause made Petal tense her muscles and ball her hands into fists. Jachz moved forward to stand next to Enna. He reached out a hand and took Petal’s right fist into his.
 

“It worked,” Jachz said.

Holly fidgeted from one foot to another.
 

“There’s a freakin’
but
, isn’t there?” Petal said. “Just tell it to me straight. What’s going on?”

“The good news is you suffered no damage,” Enna said with a smile. “Your systems are intact, and you’ll notice if you scan it that your memory capacity is empty and fully functional.”
 

“I don’t care about me. What about Gerry? Did his mind populate this new tech of yours?”
 

Enna turned to look at the tank. Her smile eased, but her eyes widened. “It’s so different,” she said, her voice taking on an edge of awe. “Different from any transcendent I’ve ever worked on.” She stepped forward and swung a tall OLED screen round to face Petal and the others.
 

Much like the screens Petal remembered seeing in James Robertson’s hospital room in Criborg’s island HQ, this one displayed a series of diagnostic feedback graphs and numbers.
 

Enna went through each column, explaining how Gerry’s heart rate was perfect; blood-oxygen levels were optimal; cognition activity was normal.
 

“I’m still waiting on the but,” Petal said. “Why’s he still unconscious and on your systems? Is he reliant on those servers of yours?”

“No,” Enna said. “They’re just for monitoring. He’s perfectly healthy. I just wanted to see if I could fix one thing.”

“Fix?” Petal jumped off the table, nearly losing her balance. Jachz reached out for her and stopped her from falling. “What do you mean fix? There shouldn’t be anything to fix if he’s okay. What the hell’s going on? What aren’t you telling me?”
 

Enna didn’t respond. Petal could tell she wanted to say something, her lips pursed together, but the words never came. Petal turned around and looked up at Jachz. No response. Holly—her face contorted into a grimace. Holly stepped forward and reached out for Petal, but Petal stepped back, not wanting the pity.
 

“You lot better start talking. I ain’t in the mood to play these bullshit games. What the fuck’s wrong with Gerry?” Her hands shook with fear and a building rage. It was all she could do to keep her spikes sheathed.
 

With a sigh Enna stepped away from the screens and looked directly at Petal. “I’m afraid his memory didn’t remain intact during the transfer. Jachz analysed the before and after, and there’s a degree of lost or corrupt data in his memory centre.”

“How bad is it?” Petal asked, already knowing what memories would be missing—she had seen them herself during the transfer, after all.
 

“We won’t know until we wake him up.”

Petal closed her eyes and tried to recall the images she had seen during the transfer, but they wouldn’t come into focus, her own memory was still affected by the ’Stem. “Wake him. Now.”

***

Petal and the others stood around the operating table. Gerry, in his cloned body, wearing a set of white cotton overalls, lay still on its surface. Without the assisted breathing apparatus, his chest continued to rise and fall. The diagnostics on the OLED screen continued to report no major issues.
 

Enna held a slate. One gesture and she would send the diagnostic system a command to inject Gerry with an anti-sedative that would bring him out of his induced slumber.
 

The older woman looked at Petal, waiting for her command.
 

“Do it,” Petal said.
 

Holly had her arm wrapped around Petal’s waist. Petal followed suit, needing the support, both to continue to stand upright and to feel the body of a friend close to hers. Enna had taken on this kind of impassive character that Petal found difficult to take comfort from. She could understand why this was—Enna always had Gabe as a focusing lens for her personality, but without him, things were raw. And Jachz hadn’t yet learned tact.
 

With a simple gesture, Enna sent the command.
 

The diagnostic OLED blipped once, and a single blue flashing dot bloomed twice. The data stream changed, showing spikes in cognition and neural activity.
 

Petal turned her attentions to Gerry.

Even though the clone didn’t include the upgrades and alterations he’d had from his visit to the Family’s space station, it was one hundred percent accurate to how she remembered him the first time Gabe had brought him to their hideout in downtown. He’d looked so innocent and surprised then, staring at her through the crack in the doorway.
 

Looking back on it, she realised she had fallen in love with him from that very moment. And that feeling had only increased with each crazy situation they found themselves in.
 

Gerry’s eyelids fluttered.
 

Petal stepped forward, reaching out a shaking hand to touch his bicep. The touch acted like a catalyst. Gerry’s body tensed and he coughed, sitting up. He opened his eyes and leaned forward, spluttering and spitting out blue liquid, staining his clothes.
 

Enna rushed forward and patted him on the back until he had cleared all the liquid from his throat. Holly stepped back with wide eyes, shaking her head.
 

“Gerry,” Petal said as if she were standing on the other side of a dream. “Can you hear me? It’s me, Petal.”
 

He didn’t respond. Just stared straight ahead, his eyebrows creasing together as though he were processing some difficult question, or at least trying to take in his surroundings. He was looking right at Holly, and the young girl just stared back before looking at Petal, a question forming on her lips.
 

“Gerry,” Petal said again, reaching across his chest to grab his other arm and pull him around to face her. Enna stepped out of the way and focused her attentions on the OLED screen. Petal could detect Gerry’s node on their private network—he’d remembered their address! And Enna had managed to include his AIA.
 

Petal detected traffic to and from Gerry’s mind to Mags.
 

“Talk to me,” Petal said, trying to swallow the edge of panic that was starting to form a lump in her throat.
 

Eventually, Gerry seemed to realise there was activity outside of his internal systems. He shuddered for a moment as though he had just woken up. He looked from Holly to Jachz, his face scrunching up in confusion. And then finally, he turned his face to Petal.
 

She smiled, blinking the tears from her eyes, desperate to hear his voice again.
 

“It’s me,” she said, still clinging to his biceps as he held his arms by his side. His legs dangled off the side of the table. He trembled in her arms like someone who had spent too long out in the cold and couldn’t get warm.
 

“Talk to me, Gez, please… say something. You hear me?”

“I… I know you?” he finally said, scratching out the words.