Code Breakers Complete Series: Books 1-4 (87 page)

“We can do it two ways: the first is to upload or download to clone one’s internal systems via her neck port; the second is with a secure wireless channel. With the correct slate software, we’ll be able to connect with the nanocells directly.”

“How secure is it?”

“No one’s hacked it yet,” Saladin said, puffing up with pride. “It’s been in the works at Cemprom’s secret tech division for the past decade.”

“Wait a minute.” James handed the slate back to him. “Are you telling me this is still a prototype? It hasn’t been used effectively in the field yet?”

“We’ve done extensive simulations and modelli—”

“No, no, no, this is not right.” James ran a hand through his hair and whirled away. The thought of the battle ’droids turning on Vickers’s men came to him. He thought they were secure, too, after running simulations, yet in the field, on their first mission, they were hacked.
 

“It’s fine, Doctor,” Saladin said. “We’ll test it with her in the cell first. Make sure it’s okay. Trust me. It’s really had a lot of testing.”

The door opened, and Fuentes walked in, preventing James from protesting further. She looked like she just came from a media studio: her hair nicely done up, her suit perfectly tailored. Her stiletto heels clacked across the tiles. She approached James and put her hand on his shoulder.
 

“You look flustered, Doctor. Are you okay?”

He opened his mouth to speak when a thud came from the scanner. All three of them looked round to see clone one on her side, her hand spread up against the glass and her mouth shaping words.
 

“Well, look who’s awake,” Fuentes said, soothing James by massaging his shoulder. “Isn’t she pretty? She’ll be perfect. Your new daughter... our new security officer.”

***

Clone one looked scared. James guessed anyone would be, stuck in a tube with an array of tools and probes scanning each and every brain function. But the haunted look on her face reached further than that. It was the look of someone who had seen and experienced things no one should have to experience. Her lips quivered as Saladin and his young assistant, Malory, helped her stand.
 

Throughout the slow, careful procedure, clone one hadn’t taken her eyes off James. He couldn’t even remember if she had blinked. It was like she wanted to take all of him in like an all-seeing camera. No shutter. Always open. Always recording.
 

She shivered. Her naked body rippled with the change of atmosphere. Malory wrapped her in a fleece robe. Water droplets ran off clone one’s head and soaked into the plush fabric. And then came a breathy moan from her lips.
 

Her throat bobbled, and she pushed herself forward, as if willing the words to come. Words that James wasn’t sure he wanted to hear. What did someone in stasis for six years have to say? What horrors could they suffer in their induced unconscious dream world? Although her brain activity had never registered anything beyond the bare minimum, James always wondered if the clones might not experience something while in stasis.
 

The thought of being trapped in a nightmare made him look away from her, the guilt too much. But she staggered forward, her baby-babble speech growing louder, more refined as her muscles remembered how to form words.
 

“Doh... doh... doct...”

Fuentes smiled, impressed at what she saw. “She’s trying to say your name, James. Listen.”

He didn’t want to listen.
 

When he looked at her, he could see her face from before: covered in blood, the crazy smile, and the pieces of torn skin hanging from her hair.
 

But despite that, he couldn’t deny her. Not now. He’d come too far. Waited for too long. With Rosario and Saladin’s support, he could make things right. Make her right. For all his faults, he always had hope.
 

Clone one stepped closer. James waited, unsure what to do. She held her arms out. They shook and trembled, cutting a pitying sight. It broke through his fear. Those eyes of hers still hadn’t blinked; they bore into him as her face beseeched him.
 

Finally he moved closer, bringing his own arms up to take her outstretched hands.
 

It was like an electric shock. As soon as they touched, she blinked, and tears flowed. Her face screwed up with too much emotion as she fell into him, wrapping her arms around his body and burying her face into his chest. She trembled against him.
 

Closing his eyes and bringing his arms around her back, pulling her into a gentle embrace, he promised her everything would be okay. “You’ll be fine, my daughter. In time, you’ll be well again.”

With Saladin and Cemprom’s technology, there was that incredible power again: hope. It could drive everything—for good or bad.
 

“I think she likes you,” Fuentes said.
 

“She’s amazing,” added Saladin.

“Okay,” Fuentes said. “Let’s get her in the cell and inject the nanobots. We need to see if her body will react to them.”

“Wait,” James said, feeling protective of the girl in his arms. “She needs time. She’s just woken up.”

“Time’s a luxury we don’t have, I’m afraid. We need to know one way or the other.”

He knew she was right. As cruel as it was, if the procedure worked as Saladin expected, then she would be a huge benefit to the safety of the city and the eradication of Elliot. And when he thought back to it, he created these clones for that very purpose. If there was a chance they could repair the damaged parts of their brains, make them safe and effective, they would fulfil their destiny, but more importantly, he would have his daughters back. Regardless of the source they were based on, he’d always viewed them as his daughters.

And hadn’t he thought every single day when he looked upon their emotionless forms in the stasis pods how much he’d love to have a chance to give them a life safe from insanity? It had worked—to a degree—with Petal and Sasha. Now was an opportunity to improve clone one and two, give them the same chance to live.
 

“Come on, girl, let’s get you safe inside here and we’ll bring you some food and water. We’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”

At first she didn’t move, clinging to him like a limpet. But then as he stepped back, she released her grip, stepped back, and tried to read the intention on his face.
 

“It’s okay, really. We’re all here to help you. I’ve found a solution.”

She remained impassive.
 

He found it disconcerting. Did she look upon that poor boy in the same way before ripping him apart?

As soon as he thought it, her face softened. She nodded her head and held out her hand, letting him guide her into the Plexiglas cell. He placed her gently onto the bed and sat beside her.

It was then he felt his VPN buzz with an incoming message. He took his personal slate from his pocket. It was Sasha! He read the message, then looked up at Fuentes. She stared back, a smile on her face.

Chapter 21

14:00. The storm roared on, gaining on Gabe and Petal’s location every second. The wind whipped at them so strongly, Gabe had to crouch in front of a boulder to avoid being blown to the hard, dusty ground.
 

“Link hands,” he yelled, holding out his hand to Petal, who clutched the iron handle of the bunker hatch. She reached to him, gripping his palm. She pulled and he pushed until they both held onto the hatch. Gabe kneeled, took the handle, and heaved the hatch over, leaning his body against it, propping his feet on the edge so the wind couldn’t blow it shut.

“Go!” he shouted to Petal.

She ducked under his body and clambered down the ladder, carrying the water, rations, and the box containing Alpha’s damaged parts. When she had disappeared inside, Gabe followed, first placing his feet on the lowest rung he could reach and then ducking down.

The hatch crashed shut, sending the vertical tunnel into silence and darkness.

His hands slipped, and his weight shifted, sending his feet skidding off the metal ladder. He fell a few feet before hooking his forearm over and catching his fall. His face swung forward with the momentum, striking against the tunnel’s surface.
 

Lights flashed in his eyes and then blinded him. He thought he’d suffered a severe concussion, but when he looked down, he saw Petal waving at him.
 

“The place has power.”

“Ya could’ve warned me!”

“Sorry, Gabe, didn’t realise.”

He squinted and waited for his eyes to adjust to the sudden lights. Strip panels of white OLEDS ran down the length of the tunnel and presumably through the roof of the bunker, if it were anything like the ones he grew up in.
 

Once at the bottom he stretched out, easing his old muscles. “I’m getting too old for this sh—”

“Sugar!” Petal said with a kind of happy yelp.

“What?”

“There’s freakin’ sugar here. Proper stuff, too. None of that shitty artificial crap that melts your brain.” She held up a jar with a spoon’s worth of grains in the bottom. She pawed at them like a bear scooping honey from a hive. She thrust it to him. “Want some?”

“Sure, in a bit. Let’s see what we got down here first, eh? Like crazy people waiting to slaughter us and eat our innards.”

There were no crazy people. The bunker extended approximately ten metres long and five wide and was decorated in the finest concrete blue-grey. He was right: OLED strips gridded the low ceiling, casting the entire room in an even light.
 

He scanned round. It looked like the place had been used recently. He found cartons of powdered food and proteins, cooking utensils, and paper plates with what looked like fresh stains on them. There was also a blanket crumpled in the corner.
 

Gabe kneeled and picked it up, and something thudded to the floor.
 

“Shit me, Gabe, it’s a proper book.”

Curious. He picked it up, turned it over in his hands, and read the cover.
 

“What is it?” Petal asked. “A computer manual, tech specs? Some old history book?”

“A novel.”

“A what?”

Gabe turned to her, clutching the book in his hands. “Ya tellin’ me ya don’t know what a novel is?”

She shook her head. “Is it like a bible or something?”

“They’re both fiction, girl, but one tells the truth.”

“Which one?”

“The novel, of course. Here, take a look.”

He handed it to her, and she gripped it as though it were the most precious thing in the world. On the cover was a picture of a woman in a red coat. She wore silvered filters over her eyes. Petal read out the word on the front, “Neuromancer.” She flicked through the pages. “I don’t get it, Gabe.”

“Did James not program ya to have any appreciation of the arts?”

“Sure he did. The art to hack computers and fuck people’s shit up.” She flashed him a smile.

“Well, let’s hope now Gerry’s poking about in ya brain, he can give ya some extra knowledge. It’s a story. Ya read it for entertainment, but good ones also teach ya something, and sometimes, like in the case of that one, predict the future.”

She gave him a wonky expression. “Predict the future? You serious?” She looked at the book as if it were some kind of magical device.
 

“Not in a literal sense. Ya don’t open it up and see the future as such, but at the time it was written, like many books back in the day, they speculated on stuff. Scientists would then end up developing tech that mirrored what had been written about in the story.”

“So like incidental prediction algorithms?”

“Yeah, just like those, only more entertaining. Take it; ya should read it some time.”

“You found it. And you know more about it than me, perhaps you should keep it?”

“I’ve read it. Trust me, ya’ll love it.”

“When did you read a book?”

“When I ran with the gangs, we broke into some dead, rich guy’s place. He had a library. A proper honest-to-God library full of books. Some of the fools burned ’em for fuel. But those crack heads couldn’t read. My ol’ man taught me from a young age, so I took them books, kept ’em for myself. Used to read ’em at night when the others were fightin’ or fuckin’. That one taught me a lot about hacking in an abstract way.”

“You’re a freakin’ enigma. Who’d have known it? Why didn’t ya tell me this stuff before?”

He shrugged. “Didn’t come up.”

“What else don’t I know about you?”

“It’s rumoured I play a mean jazz flute solo.”

“A what?”

“Never mind. What are ya pickin’ up traffic-wise? Clearly the place is empty, but where’s the data coming from you detected?”

Petal had opened the book and was reading the page, not listening to Gabe. She murmured as she read. “... The colour of television—”

“Hey,” Gabe tapped her shoulder. “I’m talkin’ to ya. Where’s the data coming from?”

“Eh? Oh, through there. Some old terminal.”