Cyberdrome (33 page)

He leaned in
close and whispered in her ear. “I don’t want anyone else to get hurt, especially
you. Are you sure you can do this?”

She looked over
at Elsala, who was standing near Javid. “Maybe with her help.” She turned back
to Alek. “Yes, I really think I can do this.”

At Alek’s
insistence, everyone except for Maya and Elsala moved several hundred meters up
the tunnel. Cloudhopper detached the Research Pod and drove the Rover up the
tunnel as well. It was stupid, he realized, since the deletion bomb would
probably clear the entire sector if it went off. A few hundred meters’ distance
wouldn’t make a difference.

Maya had him lay
on his stomach on one of the drop-down beds inside the Research Pod. Then she
combed through the cabinets until she found what she was looking for—a medical
kit with a pain suppressor.

“The surgery
probably won’t hurt,” she said as she laid the suppressor on the back of his
neck, “but there is no sense taking chances.”

He felt a slight
pinprick on his neck and then his entire body went numb. When he realized that
he couldn’t tell if he was breathing or not, he started to panic. Maya
reassured him that the sensation was normal, and that his breathing was regular.

Despite the
numbness of his body, he felt a strange warmth on his lower back as Maya guided
Elsala’s hand into his body. Elsala’s strange ability to pass through solid
objects made her the perfect knife, Maya had told him as they set up the
surgery area. The big question was whether Elsala could remove the false kidney
without killing the patient.

“Got it,” Maya
exclaimed a while later. “I can’t believe it worked, Alek. How do you feel?”

“I’m numb,” he
said. “I don’t feel anything. Can you turn me over? I want to see this thing.”

“Hold on,” she
said. “Let me reduce the power on the suppressor.” She began to press something
on his neck. “Tell me if you begin to feel any pain.”

The feeling
began to return to his body, first as a slight tingling, like when an arm falls
asleep. Then he felt the firm pad beneath him and realized he was fully back.
He sat up carefully, but still felt no pain. When he turned around, he saw something
that made his stomach churn.

“Is that it?” he
asked, staring down at the bloody mass held in Elsala’s outstretched hands. Elsala’s
eyes were wide and fixed on the kidney.

“According to
her,” Maya said, staring down at the thing as well. She turned to face him.
“Are you sure you’re okay? No discomfort? No pain?”

“I’m a little
freaked out looking at my own kidney,” he said. “But other than that, I’m
fine.” He leaned over to Elsala and whispered, “Are you sure that’s a bomb?”

Elsala looked up
at Alek and then opened her hands. In slow motion, Alek watch the bloody kidney
slide out of her hands and fall toward the ground. He tried to grab for it but
was too late—it hit the ground with a wet splat.

He looked over
at Maya who had her hands raised in defense. “Did you think that would have protected
you from the blast?” he asked.

“All right, quit
smirking. Remember, you’re the one who wanted everyone to move a few meters up
the tunnel. Did you think that would protect them?”

“You’re right,”
he said, but then heard a strange crunching sound and turned to see the kidney
begin to move. “What the hell?”

“Maybe we should
all get out of here,” Maya said. “Like very far away. Quickly.”

Before either of
them could move, Elsala touched the kidney and shouted “Open.” The kidney
ripped open and began ejecting small glowing red blocks, straight up in to the
air. As it spit up the blocks, it simultaneously began to shrink. When it had
ejected several dozen blocks, it folded in on itself and disappeared.

Alek and Maya
both sat there staring at the jumble of blocks on the ground between them.
“Whoa,” he exclaimed.

“I second that,”
Maya said. “What just happened?”

“She must’ve
segmented it,” he said, reaching down to pick up one of the blocks. It felt
cold in his hand, almost like an ice cube. “Sort of like a simplified version
of my Swarm,” he said, holding out the block for her to examine.

“So, it won’t
blow up now?” she asked, hesitant to touch the block. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” he
said, “unless you put all of the blocks back together.” He paused a moment
while he counted them. “There are 27 blocks, so I would guess that if you made
a cube out of them, three wide, by three deep, by three tall, the program would
become functional.”

She squatted
down and tentatively reached for one of the blocks.

“Wait,” he
yelled.

She jumped
again. “Damn it, Alek. Don’t do that. You almost gave me a heart attack.”

“We can use
these,” he said, tossing one of the blocks in to the air and catching it. “We
can use these against Ceejer.”

She looked up at
him. “How?”

“These blocks
are part of a class-twelve deletion routine,” he said. “If we can get them near
Ceejer and then put them back together, we might have a chance to destroy it
and go home.”

“How will that
help us?” she asked. “Wouldn’t we blow up as well?”

Cloudhopper then
came down the tunnel. “The CeeAut female said the machines are beginning to
swarm by the hundreds outside the entrance to this tunnel. We need to make a
decision soon—fight or flight.”

“So, what do we
do?” Maya asked.

Alek looked at
Cloudhopper, then back at Maya and smiled. “I say we swarm too
.”

PART FOUR

WATER

SIXTEEN

W
hen
Alek and the others emerged from the tunnels a short while later, they found
themselves surrounded by a completely new form of robotic creatures. Alek wondered
if these were the shape-changing creatures that Kay had asked him about
earlier.

They looked
similar to the Predators in that they were robotic, but instead of having distinct
body parts, they were composed of a series of tubular segments held together in
a roughly human configuration, with two arms, two legs, but no head. The
segments were all identical—each about a meter long with multi-finger grasping
devices at each end. These grasping devices interlinked the segments that made
up the creature’s arms, legs, and torso, and also served as its feet and hands.

One side of the
circle of these weird machines, which Alek decided to call “Soldiers” since
that’s what they looked like, began to part and Alek saw a straight path
forming in the crowd. Evidently, the machines were guiding them in a specific
direction, or maybe
herding
was a better description.

Without
speaking, Alek, Maya, Javid, Cloudhopper, and Hershel began walking toward the
opening. They stayed close together, shoulders nearly touching as they walked.
It was a good defensive posture, Alek thought, even though it would be useless
against the metal creatures that loomed over them.

The two KaNanee
walked defiantly behind them, chest out, snarling at the nearest Soldiers. They
were practically daring the machines to attack them. Conversely, the cat-like
Persis dropped down on all fours and began crawling behind the KaNanee. She
looked terrified, Alek thought, and then realized that it might be just a
trick. By appearing to be frightened and timid, she could be trying to lull the
Soldiers into ignoring her. That would be a mistake, as Alek had already
learned.

The path formed
by the Soldiers led straight to an open Circuit Gate. Obviously they were being
taken somewhere outside this sector. Alek was a little reluctant to enter it on
foot, until he saw Javid step into the glowing wall and vanish.

He and Maya
entered the Gate together. When they emerged on the other side, they were surrounded
by even more Soldiers. Over the tops of the nearest machines, he could see what
looked like a Mayan pyramid behind them, with stairs on each side going all the
way to the top.

Again, the wall
of Soldiers parted and formed a path to the pyramid. As they got closer, Alek
saw that it was actually made out of Soldier parts—thousands of sections, maybe
millions, all interlinked. When he and the others reached its base, Alek headed
straight up the stairs without hesitation. Halfway up he heard a commotion
behind him, and when he turned around, he saw that the Soldiers had blocked the
others from following.

“What’s going
on?” Alek yelled down.

“Apparently we
are not on Ceejer’s guest list,” Cloudhopper replied.

“Be careful,”
Maya said.

He nodded. “I
will.”

“Don’t trust
it,” she added, almost under her breath.

“I don’t trust
anyone,” he said, glancing briefly at Cloudhopper. He then turned and hurried
up the steps.

At the top, he
found a large platform made out of what looked like Core material, and in the
middle stood a tall person wearing a gray-colored bodysuit. When Alek came
within a dozen meters, the person turned around to face him and he realized
that it wasn’t a man.

The creature was
nearly three meters tall, with overly long thin arms, and what he thought was a
bodysuit was actually dull gray skin. Its head was too large and it had massive
black eyes that stared blankly back at him. It looked exactly like the old
movie version of an alien from outer space.

“‘Will you walk into my parlor?’
said the spider to the fly.” The words were soft and gentle and came from a
small, slit-like mouth.

“You must be
Ceejer,” Alek said.

The creature
spread its long arms and bowed to him. “I presume that my extraterrestrial facade
gave me away. You are, of course, well known to me. You are Alexander. Your
name means ‘Defender of Man.’”

Alek forced a
smile, but inside, his stomach churned. This thing was playing with him—he
could feel it in his bones. Maybe the “spider and the fly” comparison wasn’t
far from the truth. If it was, he had to play along. “You’ve chosen a pretty
weird Avatar,” he said with a forced laugh. “Your own design?”

Ceejer took a
step sideways. “Not at all, Alexander,” it said, holding out its arms, and staring
at them. “I owe all of this to you—the defender of man and creator of the
Cyberphage.”

“I don’t
understand,” Alek said, taking a casual step sideways as well. They were now
circling each other in both words and movement.

“I was in the
process of creating a more
appropriate
body for myself out of one of
your Omnisuits when your Panspermia wave passed through this sector.” Ceejer
crossed its arms and took two quick steps sideways. “This is what it did to me.
This is how it chose to render me.”