Free Radical (30 page)

The first bot had reached the room and had turned to head back into its assigned corridor, so it faced away from him as he dashed into the room. He didn't bother with the pistol, since he couldn't hurt these things anyway. It wheeled around as it heard his footsteps. He headed right, circling around the pillar. The bot moved forward to chase him. Technically, it would have had a shorter trip if it had headed around the opposite direction and headed him off, but instead it simply gave chase.

Deck circled quickly around the pillar. The far side was flat, with a single door built into its surface. Deck practically punched the button as he ran by. The door opened instantly to a yawning shaft.

The bot rounded the corner and Deck, out of options, dove into the open shaft.

The grid of satellites that blanketed the Earth was getting thin. One by one they winked out, captured by the relentless hacking of Shodan.

As the main arteries of GlobalNet were severed, the traffic was diverted through the slower, ground-based lines. Network congestion increased as each hub fell to Shodan's attack.

Further escalating the problem was human nature. In any disaster, people flocked to broadcast media, waiting for the first sign of news. How bad is it? Who is doing this? How does this affect me? Am I in danger? What is the government doing about it? The questions became more intense as the disaster progressed. The reporters, for their part, could do nothing but speculate and repeat the tiny morsels of rumor and spin that were released by TriOp and the military.

As millions of people tuned in, the network load increased further. Mobile phones could no longer connect. Television feeds became grainy and over-compressed. In some places they stopped altogether. Even as available bandwidth was reduced by 75%, the demand for it was increasing rapidly. Local communications systems were failing. Looting began in a few scattered locations.

People began to call friends and family to make sure they were all right, further burdening the network. The panic fed on itself. The network was crumbling.

Deck had planned to grab onto the cables as his body arced across the elevator shaft. As he reached out, he could see that there were no cables, only hundreds of meters of empty air separated him from the darkness below.

He slammed into the rear wall of the shaft, grasping for anything to break his fall. His right hand dragged helplessly against the smooth wall, but his left found a small ledge. He grasped it and managed to hang on.

A moment later the door shut behind him, leaving him in total darkness. A strong updraft had been pushing on him, and it ended as the door sealed. He grasped onto the ledge with both hands, panting.

The darkness was absolute.

He groped pointlessly with his left hand, looking for something, anything that would be easier to grasp. He was quickly losing strength in his hands. He dragged his feet back and fourth, but could find no features in the smooth wall.

Suddenly the lights returned, along with the flood of air from below. He didn't bother looking over his shoulder, he knew the bot had opened the door.

Looking at the two side walls, he saw a deep groove running vertically down the shaft. In the groove were thick horizontal metal bars. It looked like a ladder, only it was far too narrow. The bars could barely accommodate a single hand at a time.

Above, metal footsteps came to a stop as a shadow moved into the doorway.

Without hesitating, he pushed away from the wall, trying to turn his body to grasp the narrow ladder on the adjacent wall. His right hand missed, but his left found its mark and clamped onto the rough metal bar.

Deck allowed himself a second to recover and glance up into the doorway. The bot was having difficulty moving itself into a position where it had a clear shot at him. It needed to shoot about forty-five degrees downward, and a ways off to one side. Since its gun was mounted beneath its torso, it couldn't make the shot. It needed to lean outwards and turn sideways, something it couldn't do without falling.

He also noticed that there was an identical ladder on the opposing wall of the shaft.

Deck began climbing downward, not waiting to see if the bot managed to figure it out. As he descended, he could hear the whine of servos and the occasional clunk as the door attempted to close on the bot.

His hands were quickly blackened by the grime and grease that coated the bars. The narrow rungs made climbing difficult and slow. He wondered why anyone would build a ladder this tight.

His arms began to fatigue, and he became ever more aware of his existing bruises and aches. His ribs, in particular, began to throb from the exertion. He moved further down the shaft, away from the pool of light above and into the shadows below.

The bot finally gave up and departed. The doors snapped shut and Deck was again banished to total darkness. The updraft stopped. The effect was mostly psychological, but without the constant lift of air, he felt heavier.

He moved carefully, feeling his way down and trying to ignore the building pain and fatigue. He knew there was no way he could climb all the way down. His arms would give out long before he reached the bottom.

For several minutes he climbed downward while he tried not to think about the vast empty space between himself and the bottom of the shaft.

The question stuck in his mind. Why would anyone build a ladder this narrow? Why would they then grease it? Why build them on both sides of the shaft?

Suddenly it dawned on him. This wasn't a ladder at all, it was a track. The elevator probably had some sort of tread or gear that locked into the groove and pulled itself along the track. That was why there had been no cable.

His upper arms were burning by now. He needed to rest. He tried to hook his arm through one of the bars so he could relax his grip and hang freely, but the gap was too narrow. Fumbling in the dark, he nearly lost his balance looking for a position where he could rest. He decided to keep climbing.

He had been sleeping for six weeks, and now he was awake and in a constant state of panic, exercise, and starvation. His body was failing him, rebelling against the constant abuse.

He turned his head to the side, squinting into the darkness and straining to see the faintest edge of light. He hoped to find a door by seeing the light coming through. It was hopeless, he knew, because the doors had airtight seals on them that would certainly block out all light.

But these doors had to open somehow. He paused, staring into the blackness. Either they were opened mechanically when the elevator was present, or (more likely) there was a dataport nearby. He began stopping every few rungs and reaching out to the wall with his left hand, feeling for a metal catch or connector.

His upper arms were burning, and just holding out his arm to grope the wall was exhausting. His sweat mixed with the grease, making his hands slippery and forcing him to grip even harder to keep his hold on the rungs.

As he slid his hand down the left wall, his fingertips brushed over an uneven shape. He prodded it, but it didn't seem to have any surface features. It seemed to be made of plastic, and was more or less square shaped.

Thinking it might be a dataport, he decided to try to jack in. This meant he had to turn around and grip the bar with his left while reaching with his right, where his interface was. He moved slowly, switching hands and digging his heel in as best he could. He was facing away from the ladder now. He wobbled slightly as he reached out, feeling with his right.

His fingertips found the edge of the protruding plastic shape. He didn't detect any connection, though. He needed to get his palm over the box.

He leaned out further, opening his left hand until he was just holding on with the tips of his greasy fingers. Still nothing.

He thought again of the deadly drop below him. He was grateful he couldn't see it, since he probably wouldn't have the nerve to pull a stunt like this if he could see the abyss.

It seemed to be slightly above him. He returned to the ladder and moved up a couple of rungs before trying again.

Reaching out, his palm met the edge of the plastic surface.

Out of the darkness came the familiar cascade of glowing geometry. Walls of shimmering red surrounded him. He was at the midpoint of a long chain of yellow wire-frame, with red spheres attached at regular intervals along its length. At the base of the chain was a cube made of interlocking shapes of varying colors.

He was inside of one of the spheres.

The cube seemed to be the lift itself. He needed to figure out how to move it. His grip was failing quickly. He would send the lift to the floor just below his current position, and then climb down into it.

The red sphere seemed to contain controls to move the lift, but none of them had any affect on its position. Some of the shapes looked wrong, disjointed. Somehow the lift had been broken or scrambled.

Both arms burned. His entire upper body trembled with fatigue. Sweat coated his body. Drops ran down his face in into his eyes.

The lift refused to respond to any commands he sent it. Even sending emergency overrides to it wouldn't get it to move. It sat, motionless at the bottom of the shaft.

Deck needed off of this ladder now. Even if the lift did come, he would never be able to hang on until it reached him. He tried the door.

The updraft returned as the door beside him popped open. He squinted as the blinding light flooded in, overwhelming his vision.

With a wince, he pulled himself back over to the ladder and ascended a few rungs. Taking a deep breath, he gathered what was left of his nerve and jumped.

He landed awkwardly, stumbling into the door frame and then falling onto his face. He gasped and rolled over onto his back, his lower legs still dangling in the shaft.

The doors slid closed on him, thumping into his bruised ribs and then opening again. He coughed with pain, but didn't move.

After a few moments, his breathing recovered and he pulled himself from the doorway, allowing the doors to close on their own.

The air was hot and damp, and smelled faintly of mildew. There was a strange heavy quality to the air, even beyond the oppressive humidity. The walls were fitted with plastic panels that were colored to look like black marble. The floor was coated with a thin layer of beige carpet. Above, the lights were set behind translucent white panels, making the lighting soft and almost shadow-less The homogeneous light was intense to overcome the dark nature of the walls and still provide a reasonable amount of light.

He was in a small reception room that seemed to be a connection point for three different corridors. It was obvious this was the executive level.

Deck slowly caught his breath as his eyes tried to adjust to the stinging light. The burning in his arms slowly subsided. He noticed the security camera pointing out of the corner of the room. He stared into it and wondered if somewhere out there Shodan wasn't staring back at him.

He knew laying in the middle of the floor wasn't a smart move. He had no idea what sort of dangers inhabited the area.

His HUD lit up.

He retreated behind the nearby reception desk and opened the connection. "Talk to me."

Rebecca appeared in a slow series of grainy still images. Her audio feed was a stuttering mess of electronic pops and static. "Hacker, how (garbled) are you (static) -ing the missi- (cutoff)?"

Deck shook his head, "Say again?"

After a long pause the connection sputtered, "What?"

"Say. Again."

"How (static) mission going? How (static) longer?"

"I'm not even on the reactor level yet. I don't know how long its going to take," he suddenly realized he was yelling to be heard, which was not a good idea, given his current position.

Her next transmission was even worse, but he managed to pick out a few key words. She seemed to be saying that GlobalNet was getting set to collapse. She also said something about their particular satellite being under attack, but that was pretty obvious.

The video finally froze on a blocky image of Rebecca pressing on the side of her headphones, straining to hear him. The audio feed kept coming.

"I'm going as fast as I can."

More static came from her side of the connection. He heard something about, "Military" and "rebooting," but couldn't make any sense out of it.

"Say again?"

There was several seconds of silence.

He was alone again. Shodan had control of at least one military satellite now.

He took a deep breath. There was an odd stench to the air that made him uneasy. It had a pungent, organic quality to it. This was alarming. The station was normally set to keep everything cool and as dry as possible. Heat and moisture brought decay and corrosion, the enemies of any orbital platform. What possible reason could Shodan have for changing the environment here?

The elevator call button was connected to the panel he had hacked from inside the elevator shaft. He was able to jack in by placing his hand over the small panel that housed the button.

He tried again to get the elevator to do 
something
. It was obviously still connected and functioning on some level, since he was able to see its connections to the rest of the transport system.

When moving it failed, he tried things at random, just looking for a way to get some sort of feedback from it. He noticed that when he tried to move it, the door would attempt to close. This was odd, since its door should be closed already.

There was some sort of safeguard that prevented the unit from moving when the doors were open. He disabled this and tried again.

The elevator began to move.

He smiled as he watched the elevator move up the geometric chain in his mind. It began to slow at it approached his level.