Code Breakers Complete Series: Books 1-4 (99 page)

He pulled a rifle from over his back and tapped the barrel. His mouth twitched, and his eyes bulged. A grim determination etched on his rubbery features.

Over to the west, towards the older district, she heard the familiar sounds of UAV engines.

Chapter 35

James heard the voices of Enna and Elaine quieten as they descended the steps and made their way into the station. He wanted to scream out, make them notice they’d left him behind, but Samir’s undeniable strength held him firm and covered his mouth. She dragged him behind one of the booths and stood before him. She stepped back as if daring him to make a move.
 

His voice caught in his throat. He wanted to shout, but he knew she’d be too quick. She held a dagger at his gut and grinned a sadistic smile. No doubt picturing herself skinning him.

She cocked her head slightly, a botanist inspecting a rare plant.
 

“You’re not a good man,” she said, her voice low and husky. “You’ve done so many terrible things. But it’s okay. I’ll help you in the afterlife. You just need to kneel before me and beg for forgiveness. Confess your sins and redeem yourself.”

He swallowed, trying to inch away from the blade that continued to push against his flesh. She’d drive it through him on a whim, but he couldn’t remain calm. He opened his mouth to call for help, but her fist struck him in the face, muting any desire to speak, splitting his lip and making his eyes water. He sobbed then, trapped and tormented.

Samir’s face twisted with hate. Sweat glistened on her head.

There was a time when he found her and clone two beautiful in their peaceful stasis-state. Fully animated and motivated, however, she looked every inch the monster he remembered from before. Regardless of Saladin’s technology and ability to control her, she hadn’t changed. She was still the flawed psychopath, the result of his failure.
 

She placed a finger against his lips. “Quiet now. I’ll make this quick—maybe.” She moved forward to kiss him on the cheek, pressing the blade against him until the skin finally broke beneath its point. Her free hand gripped the back of his neck, pinning him in place.

He screamed then.

“Confess,” she whispered. “Repent.”

Through gritted teeth he uttered, “I am a sinner, I confess.”

She smiled then, even as the sound of Enna and the others clattering up the stairs echoed through the old station. She made to move away, but then leaned in once more, bringing her lips to his ear.
 

“Enough talking... bitch,” James said through gritted teeth.
 

A shot rang out, sounding far too loud in the close space.
 

Her body stiffened.

Samir fell back, clutching her ribs.
 

Blood poured from the gunshot wound. She looked at James, her face already pale and waxy.
 

The pistol shook in James’ hand, and he eventually dropped it.

Enna and Elaine were the first to rush to James’ side. Ghanus and Liza-Marie followed and stood over Samir’s prone form. Ghanus took a pistol from his waist belt and shot her twice through the head before turning to James. “You did good. Saladin will know we’re here, though. We need to move quickly.”

“He’s been stabbed,” Enna said. “He can’t—”

“I’m okay,” James said, looking down at the wound. She’d only penetrated a few millimetres, barely through the flab around his gut. “I knew being overweight would have its benefits someday.” He tried to smile, give the impression he was okay, but the sight of Samir’s body hurt him more than the minor flesh wound.

“Come on,” Enna said. “We should carry on.”

Taking a brief look behind him, he tried to ignore the feelings of regret for killing his creation. Though he knew he hadn’t a choice, it left him hollow inside. With Sasha gone, Samir gone, and Petal’s fate unknown, all his family were quickly disappearing: the only ones left being the insane Elliot and the second clone, who was no better than Samir. And given he doubted he had more than a few hours to live, it looked like the end of the Robertson line for good.

A cool breeze blew down the old metro tunnel, bringing with it the smell of dust and carbon, but with each breath, everything began to smell of blood.
 

“Hold on,” Enna said. They stopped. James swayed but clung on to his helpers.

“What is it?” Liza-Marie said.
 

“Petal! She’s alive and here. She just sent me a secure VPN message. She said:

–
I’m heading for Cemprom. Got a few problems with some drones, but I’m heading there with Gerry—bring Omega.

“She didn’t have any luck with Alpha, though... and Gabe... didn’t make it.”

“How many more have to die for this goddamned city?” James said.
 

“I don’t know, but we’ve come this far. We can’t let Petal down now. We have to get to Cemprom. With Petal and Omega we might stand a chance. We have to try.” Enna reached out and shook his shoulder, catching his gaze with a steely expression.

“Lead on,” James said with a determination that, if it came to it, he would at least get to see Petal again and apologise, truly confess his sins to someone who mattered. He could relate to how she was probably feeling after losing Gabe.

Chapter 36

Petal and Xian dashed from side street to side street, always staying within the shadows of the buildings. They approached the square of the business district. The fibre-optic lighted fountain dominated the centre of the empty space. Most of the buildings had lights on, the citizens safely ensconced in their homes.

While standing in the shadow of an apartment building that looked like it was made entirely from glass and steel, Petal received a reply from Enna.
 

–
Hey. Glad to hear you’re okay. Be careful out there, a shit storm has descended. Fuentes has betrayed us all. Trust no one.

Her message went on to fill Petal in on what had happened to Malik and Sasha and what their plan was. Yet more grief to add to the mountain of pain she still felt about Gabe. Losing Sasha seemed especially cruel, being one of her true family, kind of. She always hated this city. It seemed the more time she spent here, the more loss she experienced.
 

Hanging from two high poles, a giant media screen showed the image of Rosario Fuentes spreading her lies. Petal felt a wave of fury when she saw the pictures of James, Enna, and the others, including herself and Gabe, as terrorists and killers.
 

“We’ll see what you say when I get my hands on you, bitch.” Petal tore her gaze away from the screen and scrutinised the area, watching for movement, for ronin. Her internal transceivers were awash with the now-familiar traffic generated by Elliot, but she dared not send her mind into the data. Elliot would spot her in an instant. Even now, she wondered how long it’d be before he found her. The city felt like his domain now. Every ronin-chipped person a potential meat puppet for his will.

“Come on,” she urged Xian, who waited anxiously beside her while taking in the details of the city. In another situation, she would have given him time to get his head around it all, but right now it was more important they get to Cemprom’s tower without being spotted.
 

They dashed across the square and ducked into the shadows of an alley. She heard the low buzz of a stun weapon coming from further down the street. It grew louder, and two ronin stopped in front of the alley. They were chatting with each other about new orders.
 

One of them, with long, shaggy hair, turned round to see Petal and Xian at the entrance to the alley. His eyes went wide with surprise, and for a brief moment he seemed to not know what to do. “Hey,” the ronin said, both grabbing his partner—a small ratlike man—and reaching for his gun.
 

Two shots fired from behind Petal, making her dive to the side, clutching her ears. As she hit the wall of the opposing building, she saw the two ronin collapse. Xian stood by her, the smoke still twisting from the barrel of his rifle. He wore a satisfied smile.
 

Petal shook her head as her ears continued to ring. “Damn. You’re a fast shot.”

He shrugged, looking at the dead bodies dispassionately, all emotion now gone. She didn’t blame him. They destroyed his whole world. She doubted he would be happy until he saw them all burn.
 

She checked the bodies. Neither wore chips. But one of them had a slate. Scouring through the files, she found regular messages from someone within Libertas’s security force. It backed up what Enna had told them about Fuentes’ lies and influence within Cemprom and the security divisions. But more importantly, it was connected to the old citywide network and not directly to Elliot like the ronin-chips.

When she checked further, she realised that the connection was cloaked. To an outsider, no such network would appear, but this particular slate had tunnelled into it securely, giving the ronin a line of communication. She wondered, then, if the plan was to bring it online and connect the populace to it via their AIAs. It’d be easier than manufacturing enough ronin-chips for the entire populace. That way, Elliot could be directly inside everyone’s head—assuming they could repair the network sufficiently.

“Xian, I’m going to try something here. Can you keep watch for a few moments?”

“I watch.” He kneeled down close to the side of the building, shrouding himself in shadows. He brought the rifle up and scanned the entrance and surrounding areas.
 

Petal knew they probably didn’t have long until someone came to investigate. His rifle wasn’t exactly a subtle weapon, and her ears were still throbbing with the sudden blast of it.
 

She connected to the slate via her remote, internal transceiver. Immediately, her mind became infinitely lighter and faster. Gerry had slithered out of his dark hiding place and guided her through the system—much of which he had designed when he worked at Cemprom before all the madness started. She connected to the citywide network and saw the full topography stretch out ahead of her. Small tower icons represented each node. Gerry conjured a graphical interface for her. He led her, like a data ghost, down the virtual street until they came to a warehouse. She peeked inside and saw rows and rows of combat ’ droids.

–
You want me to hack the droids?
she asked Gerry with her thoughts.

–
Yes. And the UAVs.

He made her turn her head. Beyond the ’droids were small plane icons representing the drones. Lines of data connected each one together. She followed the line until she came to a central server: the server the UAV controllers used to assign orders. It seemed the ’droids’ orders had been modified to come from there too.
 

In the physical realm, it was a room within the mushroom-shaped control tower. Must have been underground, given the place seemed deserted earlier. She considered trying to contact Malik and get him to speak with his buddies back at the tower, but then if it were that easy, he’d have already done it.
 

She decided to take down the server herself. The security layer around it was new. Definitely improved since the last time she and Gabe had needed to get into Cemprom’s various systems. The server icon appeared to have a shield around it—a graphical representation generated by Gerry as he manipulated her optical nerve to interpret the system.
 

She felt unsure how to go about the task, not used to having a fully capable consciousness inside with her. Gerry seemed to pick up on her hesitance.
 

–
Just follow my lead.

– I don’t know how.

– You will.
 

With that, Gerry, represented by a ghostlike form, spread out around the shield on the server. As he got close to it, black streams of datalike tentacles unfurled and struck against him. Gerry’s ghost backed away, gripped one of the tentacles with his hands, and wrestled it away from the server. Five other tentacles flayed out to attack him, but he was too fast, dodging their assault, buying her time, and causing the necessary distraction.
 

It took Petal a while to get used to such a stylised graphical representation. Before, she’d just dive into the data and analyse the bits and bytes as numbers and information. Seeing it as a mini-drama unfolding before her made her hesitant, but as she drew her mind closer to the server, she remembered all the techniques Gabe had taught her.
 

She remembered how to generate enough data to create a Denial of Service attack. That seemed an appropriate technique while Elliot’s new security layer fought with whatever Gerry was doing, his intentions obscured by the graphics.

From her transceiver she sent a wave of information requests to the server, spoofed as one of the ’droids. It was keeping up, increasing its CPU and memory allocation to handle the flood of requests.
 

The images of the ’droids faltered as they moved chaotically about the warehouse. Despite not bringing the server down, the flood of data affected the communications to the ’droids.
 

Seeing an opportunity, she increased the barrage of data to the server. While it was busy trying to deal with all the interactions, she started to decrypt the orders being sent to the ’droids. The bandwidth of the slate restricted what she could do. With Gerry fighting with the tentacular firewall, creating the diversion, and her attempts of flooding the server, there wasn’t enough capacity for her to pick apart the encryption.