Cyberdrome (37 page)

Alek looked from
Maya to his father. “So, that’s what Ceejer meant when he said he could
complete his transformation—now that I’m here. Ceejer is going to try to
download himself into my brain, just like he tried to do with you.”

“You’re
younger,” Maya said. “Your brain and body might be able to handle the stress.”

“That will never
happen,” his father said turning to face the open door. “I’ll do everything in
my power to prevent Ceejer’s escape.”

“And your son’s
death,” Maya added.

“The one thing
working in our favor,” his father began, apparently not hearing Maya’s statement,
“is that Ceejer no longer has any of the powers of a supervisor. He had to give
those up when he became a physical being.”

Alek shook his
head and looked out the open door. “He doesn’t need to be powerful when he has
an army that big,” he said. He looked back at his father. “I saw how much
concentration it required for you to make that simple cup. Do you really think
you can stand up to all of those machines if they come after me?”

His father said
nothing but his face confirmed that he could not.

“So, what do we
do?” Maya asked.

“We attack
first,” Alek said without hesitation. He looked at his father. “You conjure up
some sort of weapon, something simple like a gun, and then we go out there and
use it—right now. We kill that thing once and for all.”

His father shook
his head. “That might work if we were inside one of the Earth simulations, but
not here. The Core is different. Here we are all more
program
than
people. In other words, we would need something that would delete a program,
not kill a person.”

Well, that
explains why Tracers use electromagnetic pulsars instead of lasers
, he thought,
and
how our bodies can draw energy from the Core.
To his father he said, “Then
just build a deletion bomb, or better yet, some kind of deletion gun to use
against Ceejer.”

His father shook
his head again. “A deletion routine is a very complex program, especially when
it also has to be a three-dimensional object. I can’t just make one magically
appear like I did with that chalice.”

“You have to
try,” Alek said firmly. He felt an odd sensation, as if their roles had suddenly
reversed and he was now the father talking to his son. “He won’t dare hurt
me—at least until he’s ready to kill me, that is. But, no matter how strong we
think we are, we’re both going to surrender when Ceejer starts torturing Maya.
We need to find a way to kill the son of a bitch before he even starts.”

“I’m all for
doing something to avoid more pain,” Maya said.

“I told you,
Alek. My skills here are more limited than you might think. In order to do what
I do, I have to hold all of the code needed to build a program in my
mind—actually see it being formed—and then believe that it’s happening. Then,
when I open my eyes, if I have done everything correctly, there it is.”

“You can’t
imagine something like a deletion gun?” he asked.

“Maybe you
could, Alek, if our places were reversed. But I’m simply not the master programmer
that you have become.”

It was the first
time that his father had acknowledged his skills, and Alek wanted to enjoy the
moment but now wasn’t the time—or the place.

“Well, we have to
do something,” Maya said, rubbing the scar on her face. “I have been through
enough pain to last me a lifetime.” She glanced over at the circular pad
underneath the floating planet. “Like I said earlier, the Watchport beam may
repair damaged bodies, but it doesn’t erase memories.”

“The Watchport,”
Alek almost yelled. “That’s it.”

“What’s it?”
Maya asked.

“No time to
explain,” he said, turning to his father. “Can you open it for us?” He looked
up at the planet above them. “Can you send us both in there?”

Both Maya and
his father looked at him blankly.

“You want to
escape?” Maya asked.

His father
nodded. “That’s an excellent idea, Alek. If Ceejer can’t reach you, it will
give me time to figure out how to deal with him.”

Alek heard a
commotion outside the door. It sounded like Ceejer was returning. “Just send us
somewhere inside a major city,” he said, then glanced over at Maya and added,
“Make sure we materialize on the ground this time.”

His father
turned and raced over to the arch on the far side of the room, where Lorena
stood watching them—Alek had forgotten she was even in the room. Alek then
grabbed Maya’s hand and pulled her to the center of the transport pad.

“Wait a
minute—what about Roy and Herschel?” Maya asked, holding Alek tightly around
the waist.

“There’s no
time,” he said as he saw Ceejer step through the door. Javid came in with him,
along with several Soldiers. “You have to trust me,” he whispered.

“What is the
meaning of this?” Ceejer bellowed when he saw what was happening. “Guards!
Seize them!”

Alek glanced at
his father who gave him a thumbs-up sign. Lorena looked at him too and then
pressed something on the arch control panel. The room and everything inside it
faded into the blue and then disappeared. They were on their way
.

EIGHTEEN

A
s before, Alek
watched the planetary simulation build itself all around him. When it was complete,
he stepped out of the blue light and into a darkened city street. A second
later, he watched Maya step out of the concrete wall behind him.

“Where are we?”
she asked.

“It’s a city,
which is all I care about,” he replied, looking up and down the darkened
street. There were several groups of people walking by, but none of them seemed
to have noticed the two of them stepping out of the wall.

She tugged on
his sleeve until he looked at her. She had her head tilted back and was staring
at the sky. “No, I mean where the hell are we?”

When he looked
up, his mouth dropped open in dismay. Above them, floating high over the tall
buildings was a wall of water. Vertigo hit him and he had a sudden feeling of
hanging upside down over the ocean. He closed his eyes and tried to
concentrate. They were standing on solid ground, he said to himself, and the
water was above them.

“Underwater
city,” she finally said.

He opened his
eyes and looked at her. “Underwater?”

“Earth
Simulation Fifty-five, I think,” she said. “Remember the hologram of the planet
in the Watchport. The polar ice caps were gone—melted by global warming. Most
of the world’s coastal areas flooded. The United States in this version of
Earth put domes over some of the coastal cities. This must be one of them.” She
pointed down the street. “We’re near the edge of the city, I think.”

He looked down
the street and saw another wall of water a few blocks away. A slight reflection
of the nearby buildings gave away the presence of some sort of glass or plastic
wall holding back the sea. He tried not to think of what would happen if that
wall ever broke.

“You know he was
lying, don’t you?” she asked.

He looked at
her. “You mean my father?”

She nodded. “I
think he’s more powerful than he’s admitting to.”

“You’re saying
he could’ve built a weapon to kill Ceejer?”

“I don’t believe
he wants to kill Ceejer,” she said.

“Why? Why would
he risk all of our lives?”

“He’s obsessed,”
she said. “He still thinks he’s saving humanity in here, and he needs Ceejer to
continue his work. If Ceejer is deleted, we all go home.”

 “And he dies,”
Alek added, realizing that it might be the real reason his father was reluctant
to help them.

“Are you okay
with that?” she asked.

“He made his
choices,” he replied as he started across the street.

She grabbed his
arm to stop him. “So, what are we doing in here, Alek?” she asked. “Why did you
request a city?”

He glanced back
at her. “My father thinks we are hiding in here,” he said as he grabbed her
hand and continued across the street.

“I know you,
Alek. You don’t run from problems—you face them head on.”

He tried to
smile, but it quickly faded. “Not always,” he said. He stopped on the other
side of the street and looked down at her. “I ran from you once.”

She caressed his
face. “You had your reasons. But, now you’re back and I don’t plan on letting
you go again.”

His smile
returned. “To answer your question: I wanted a city because I need to borrow a
computer—something I can write code on.”

“I don’t
understand.”

“Remember
Herschel’s weapon?”

“The program on
his memory tab was compiled into a gun when it came up through the Watchport
beam,” she said. “Are you telling me that you want to try the same thing here?”

“If I can write
the code for a new weapon—something focused like a deletion gun—I should be
able to take it back through the Watchport and use it against Ceejer.” He
smiled at her. “If this works, we could all be going home soon.”

“I like the
sound of that,” she said, smiling back at him. “So, where do we find a computer
in an underwater city?”

He looked up at
the building in front of them. “Maybe in there.”

She looked up at
the building. “You’re right. It looks like an office building.” She looked down
at the main entrance. “Unfortunately, it’s closed and probably locked.”

“Then we’ll just
have to break in,” he said with a devilish grin.

Just then, a
woman behind them screamed. Alek turned to see two Soldier machines step out of
the concrete wall and enter the street. A woman was standing right beside one
of the headless creatures—her hands pressed to her face, screaming in sheer
terror.

He grabbed Maya
by the arm. “Don’t look back,” he whispered and began walking toward the office
building. Behind him, he heard the woman scream one last time, but then only
muffled silence remained.

The Soldiers
were looking for them, he thought as he walked steadily up the steps to the
office building. Fortunately, there were a few other people on the street and
in the dim light; they might all look the same to the machines—at least from
the back.

The main door to
the building was locked by a standard digital key code. He pulled her close to
him, keeping their backs to where the Soldier had been standing.

“Two minutes,”
he whispered. “I can have this door open in about two minutes.”

“Hurry,” she
whispered back, then started to look over her shoulder.

“No,” he said,
grabbing her arm and facing her toward the door. “Don’t look back. Pattern
recognition—they know our faces.”

“Just hurry
then,” she said, closing her eyes and pressing her body up against his.

As he went to
work deciphering the lock, he glanced up at Maya’s reflection in the glass
door. She looked almost child-like, standing there with her eyes pressed tight.
What you can’t see, can’t hurt you
, he remembered believing as a child.
Was Maya thinking that now?