The Significant (43 page)

      
“How could he do that? Rayal was always
there.”

      
“I don’t know,” Maki murmured. “That
might have been when he was sick.”

      
“If this was done five years ago, why
now?
And why outgoing?”

      
“Nothing was logged on the day of the
Pulse, right?” Maki murmured.

      
“Correct.”

      
“A message was sent to Isa on the
Altereye Distress Path, which is open to all planets in the Alliance. What if…”
he trailed off, thinking. “What if that was just bait to get her into the
chair? What if, with the open pathway, they could send the virus to the chair
once she sent an outgoing transmission?”

      
“But she would have received a
transmission first.”

      
“Which was the bait,” Maki said. “They
might have routed the message. They might have had it recorded and then
corrupted the data so it was impossible to discern the emergency. Once she was
in the chair, they could cut off the transmission, and when she tried to
reconnect, they use the open pathway to send the Pulse Virus.”

      
“That would have to be specially
programmed. I’ve never heard of an outgoing transmission causing a virus on the
source chair.”

      
“True,” Maki said. “But that could
explain why they have not done this already. They were programming it, knowing
what pathway was open.”

      
Chronus looked at Maki seriously. “You
think it was Gihron.”

      
“Colonel Amori is the only one who could
have destroyed the security coding. He was the only one outside of Isa’s inner
circle that
could
have had access to
the chair. The timeframe also matches. The codes disappeared during the month
that everything started going to hell.” Maki took a deep breath, nervous. “What
if Colonel Amori told Gihron what he had done? And they have been trying to get
a Pulse Virus programmed just for this?”

      
“Then it’s an assassination attempt,”
Chronus stated. “It’s war.”

      
“But they haven’t claimed responsibility
for the attack. They probably think we don’t know.”

      
“We have Gihron heavily monitored,”
Chronus murmured.

      
“I don’t think we will ever have them
monitored enough,” Maki said, shaking his head. “I’m going to call Isa and tell
her that she needs to build her own central processor for her work NCB chair.
Who knows if anyone’s gotten to that one…”

      
Maki tapped his ear and told the
implanted phone to call Isa.

      
“What time is it?” he murmured as Isa’s
number was dialed. He glanced at the clock and his eyes went wide. “Oh…” he
turned to Chronus. “Hey, can you see yourself out? I have a call in five
minutes.”

      
“A call?” Chronus asked.

      
“Isa,” Maki said, motioning to his ear to
tell Chronus that the Golden Elite had answered. He tried to motion with his
hands, asking Chronus to leave, but the other Bronze Elite just looked at Maki,
confused.

      
“Chronus and I just went over the log for
your chair to figure out what happened, and we have some information that you
might want to know,” Maki said. He walked out of the room as Chronus stared
after him. “Are you sitting down?” Maki’s voice said as he walked out of the
office.

      
Chronus waited until Maki’s voice was
gone before he sighed heavily and started saving the information on the NCB
chair to power it down. There was a lot about Maki’s behavior that was
concerning. Even if he was expecting a call, he would not have asked Chronus to
leave. The two Bronze Elites were very close—they always had been—but Maki had
become surprisingly distant and distracted over the previous year. Chronus had
noticed the changes more than anyone else in the Syndicate.

      
He knew Maki was hiding something.

      
However, he decided to respect Maki’s
wishes.

      
Once the NCB chair was properly powered
down, Chronus placed the drives on the seat and started to walk to the front
door. He did not know where Umana was, but he was relieved he would not have to
deal with the nervous, shaky caretaker.

      
He glanced around, trying to figure out
where Maki had gone to talk to Isa. He knew that telling Isa the Pulse Virus
was related to Gihron and facilitated by Colonel Amori would upset the Golden
Elite. He figured he would stop by Anon Tower on his way home, since Isa was
likely home, and check on her.

      
He walked to the front door when a
high-pitched whine came to his ears.

      
The sound of the alarm was muffled, but
Chronus recognized it immediately. It was the sound of an NCB chair fatal
error—the same alarm that would occur if the person sitting in the chair was
attached by a Pulse Virus.

      
Chronus ran back to the office, knowing
that that was the only NCB chair in the home. The chair was still and silent,
powered down entirely.

      
However, the alarm continued to sound.

      
Chronus started walking through the
hallways, following the sound of the alarm until he reached Maki’s bedroom. He
knocked quietly and opened the door, even though he knew that Maki had gone
elsewhere.

      
The whine of the alarm was much louder in
the bedroom. The room was also a horrible mess. There were clothes strewn
across the floor with more files and parts of machines. The bed was a tangled
mess of sheets, two of the pillows thrown to the floor.

      
The site terrified and disturbed Chronus
greatly. Seeing the office in such a state was shocking enough, but to see that
Maki’s bedroom was also so disorderly caused Chronus’ stomach to flip. It was
not uncommon to hear of Elites suffering severe, early-onset dementia and
hallucinations. Seeing Maki’s room and office in the state they were in made
Chronus believe the worst about his closest friend.

      
What worried him further was the whining
emanating from the wall behind Maki’s headboard.

      
Chronus walked to the wall, following the
sound, his eyes glancing over the various files and drives littering the floor.
When he reached the headboard, he saw there was a very large gap between the
headboard and the rest of the bed. Crouching, he found that the headboard had
been completely removed from the frame and attached to the wall.

      
He pushed the pillows aside and ran his
hand along the smooth, flat headboard, searching for any sort of opening
mechanism.

      
Along the ridge where the bedframe had
once been attached to the headboard, there was a release tab. Pulling it,
Chronus saw a panel flip open with a number pad and a screen that was flashing
green.

      
Trying to keep himself from assuming the
worst, he typed in the Syndicate passcode. When that was not accepted, he tried
Maki’s other known passwords. None of the number combinations worked. Chronus
stared at the numbers for several long moments, racking his brain for the
passcode.

      
He turned to look at the wall, listening
to the NCB chair alarm. Being so close to the noise, there was no mistaking the
alarm. He turned his head and glanced among the files around him. One stack of
files was annotated as specification sheets for high-power generators.

      
Chronus knew.

      
He did not want to believe it, but
somehow, he knew immediately what Maki was planning.

      
For that reason, when he turned back to
the number pad, he knew the passcode.

      
1-7-3-6.

      
When the light flashed twice and a loud
click followed, Chronus felt his heart began to race.

      
1736 was a very profound code for
everyone in Isa’s Syndicate. It was the code they used whenever they discussed
Aren, a former Elite Prototype who had died horrifically when they were all in
school. Aren’s death had hit everyone who knew him very hard, but Isa had
always blamed herself for his death. It was when Aren died that Isa truly
became the leader everyone in the Syndicate knew her to be.

      
But as Chronus pushed the headboard
slowly into the wall to reveal the bunker, the name caused his stomach to tie
itself in knots.

      
Aren was synonymous with pain.

      
Aren was synonymous with
rebellion
.

      
Chronus walked the short distance to the
ajar metal door, allowing the shrill whine of the alarm to echo in the hall.
Chronus took a deep breath and pushed the door fully open.

      
The cavernous bunker was lined with
machines and computers, wires haphazardly strewn about the room, connecting
different parts. There was an enormous column of hardware that nearly touched
the ceiling. It was whirring loudly, the small screen plugged messily into the
bottom flashing with the word “error.”

      
In the middle of the mess of cables and
hardware was an NCB chair—
Isa’s
NCB
chair.

      
Chronus stared, listening to the alarm,
unable to process what he was seeing.

      
He turned to one of the computers and
looked at the screen, seeing the log of processes halted with the words
“unknown fatal error” at the bottom. Above that line were lines of code about
Venus’ main security mainframe and power supply.

      
“Fuck…” Chronus barely managed to
whisper.

      
“Chronus?” Maki called. “Chronus?!”
Maki’s voice got louder. “Shit!”

      
Maki ran through his room, tipping over
stacks of files, diving into the opening into the bunker and appearing at the
door, breathing hard and looking frantically around. Chronus stared at him,
shaking his head in disbelief.

      
“What the fuck are you doing in here?”
Maki snapped. “Did you touch anything?!”

      
“No.”

      
Maki ran to the NCB chair and unplugged
one wire before punching a few codes into the back to stop the alarm.

      
The silence was deafening and heavy.

      
Maki looked at Chronus, his heart
pounding against his ribs.

      
“What the fuck were you doing in here?!”
Maki snapped. “How did you get in?!”

      
“The alarm was going off,” Chronus said,
staring at Maki seriously. “How could I ignore it?”

      
“I closed the door.”

      
“1736,” Chronus said seriously. “Do you
really think I would forget Aren’s code?”

      
Maki ground his teeth together, walking
around the NCB chair and storming over to Chronus.

      
“You shouldn’t have come in here. I told
you to leave.”

      
“I knew something was wrong, Maki,”
Chronus said strongly. “A neat freak like you leaving your office like that?
Passing out at work? Tell me what is going on.”

      
“I don’t owe you any explanation!” Maki
snapped, shoving Chronus angrily backward. Chronus was shocked at the actions,
tripping and finding himself on the ground. “You don’t know everything about
me! You have no right to break into my room!”

      
Maki pushed Chronus back to the ground,
pinning him and grabbing his shoulders in a vice-grip.

      
“Did you touch
anything
?” he snarled.

      
Chronus stared at Maki, unable to speak.

      
“Maki?” he breathed.

      
Maki continued to glare at Chronus, his
breathing labored through his nose, his eyes filled with something Chronus had
never seen before.

      
Suddenly, Maki’s face softened. He
scrambled to his feet and backed away.

      
“Chronus…I…”

      
The other Elite got to his feet, staring
at Maki in horror.

      
“How long?”

      
Maki lowered his eyes to his feet.

      
“Three years,” he muttered. “I think when
I got into that crash on Caroie, the head trauma changed things.”

      
“And you never thought to say anything?”
Chronus hissed. “That you could feel emotions? Not even to
me
?”