Code Breakers Complete Series: Books 1-4 (115 page)

“Fine,” Petal croaked, her voice catching on a dry spot in her throat.
 

“Your eyes…” Bonny said, mesmerised.
 

Petal had long dispensed with wearing goggles, no longer caring what people thought of the shifting colours that would occur. “It’s fine,” Petal said. “It happens when I work.”

With her bones aching and muscles protesting, Petal stood up.
 

She used Gabe as a support and shuffled towards the gang boss.
 

Figgy had hunched forward, his chin on his chest and dreads obscuring his face.
 

Her internal clock told her that the reboot process had started. The Cray’s fans had whined down to a hushed, tense silence. Everyone stood around her, watching Figgy, waiting…

A full minute later and nothing had happened. Petal was about to lean forward and check him for a pulse when he inhaled a scream and lurched back into his chair. His one organic eye shot open and stared wide as his body convulsed.
 

“Help me,” Gabe said, grabbing his father-in-law’s wrists. Petal and Ezra helped keep Figueroa from jerking out of the chair.
 

“Oh my god,” Bonny said. “What’s happening to him? Is he dying?”

“No,” Petal said. “His brain is just interfacing with the new routines.” She knew that he was over the worst of it. She had doubted he’d be strong enough to even wake up after the reboot. The new system would overload the interface as it tried to merge with his neural processes.
 

Despite how it looked, this was a good sign.
 

Eventually, he calmed down. Sweat shined on his dark skin. His frail body trembled, but at last he became still. Looking more tired than Petal felt, the old guy locked eyes with her. The merest hint of a smile crept onto his lips. “It… worked…” he said as though trying to remember how to talk.
 

That was to be expected. With the Cray system taking over some of his functions, the pseudo-AI would need a few hours or days to optimise the bridge between man and machine.
 

“My god… it worked,” he said with more strength.

“Just what exactly was this?” Gabe asked.
 

Petal brought him up to speed.
 

A brief silence followed as everyone looked at Figgy with a mixture of awe and disbelief. While this family chatted amongst themselves and asked their patriarch what it was like, Petal stumbled back to the chair and relaxed.
 

Tiredness claimed her, making her yawn.
 

Before she headed off somewhere to sleep, Figueroa found his voice and spoke up, silencing the others. They all regarded her as one. The image of them in front of her only made her feel even more lonely, an outsider.
 

“I owe you,” he said.
 

Her internal systems buzzed, indicating a connection to a new private network: the Cray. Figgy sent her a private message across the connection.

—
Here, a datafile that will help you find your family. I’ll never be able to thank you enough for what you’ve done. Your and Gerry’s code is so… elegant, and weird. I can see that you two are made for each other.
 

Her FTP server registered a new file download.
 

—
Thank you
, Petal replied, unable to think of anything else to say and too tired to really care. —
I’m glad it worked for you.

—
My guard will take you to my personal quarters; you’ll be able to rest there overnight ahead of your journey. I’ll make sure you have transport and provisions. Take this opportunity.

—
I appreciate it, thanks.
 

Petal closed the connection, opened the file he had given to her, and read the message contained within.
 

To: Petal

From: Enna

Subject: The Gerry Situation

Message: Petal, please, come home. I’ve cracked it!
 

I can bring him back. Gerry will be whole again. But I need you here. I’ll explain more later. Please, come home.

The original message was layered in a system of encryption and sent far and wide through as many ad hoc networks as Enna could access.

She gave Figgy props for decrypting the security. He had got what he wanted and had lived up to his end of the bargain.
 

“What is it, girl?” Gabe said. “Ya’ve got a crazy look on ya face.”

“No crazier than usual. I’ve just… well, I gotta go, Gabe.”

Chapter 8

The Family’s Mars Facility.

Jachz halted at the door. Tyronius stood aside holding it open, waiting for Jachz to enter.

Anxiety crawled through his systems, scrambling his code. Nothing worked as efficiently as before, his logic chips faltering. He assessed Tyronius; his face didn’t give anything away. Jachz got the distinct impression Tyronius harboured malicious intentions, but being so new to these sensations, he couldn’t be sure. The only thing he had to go on was the unusualness of him being disturbed during his maintenance period, but that couldn’t be the sole source of this worry.
 

The room was situated in the engineering part of the Mars facility.
 

None of the workers busied themselves in the halls and workshops, leaving the place deserted.
 

Inside, a young woman sat behind a desk. Jachz hadn’t worked with her before but knew her: Tyronius’s youngest cousin, Helena.
 

“Come in,” she said, smiling. Although he had yet to become adept at reading body language and facial cues, he identified the physical tension in her muscles. Her smile did not appear natural, nor reduce his anxiety.

Tyronius placed a hand on Jachz’s back. “In you go now.”

“What is this about? Has my work schedule changed? I’m afraid I did not receive new orders. If there’s a mistake—”

“No, there’s no mistake, Jachz. At least not on our part.” Tyronius pushed Jachz into the room and followed behind, closing and locking the door.
 

Even without fully understanding his new emotions, Jachz recognised locking the door as an inappropriate action.
 

Tyronius walked around the desk and sat on the edge casually. Helena rested her chin on her crossed hands, elbows resting on the desk. They both stared at him, as if expecting something. He waited, unsure as to what was expected of him.
 

“So, Jachz,” Helena said, “what are your thoughts on Kabuki?”

“Could you be more specific?” Jachz responded.
 

“What do you think of her… evolution?”

He was about to respond with “I think”, but he wasn’t there so much to think. He was just an AI. He kept telling himself that in order to remember what he was like before his change. That was more difficult than he anticipated.
 

Even with all his processing power and data storage.
 

He was something different now. He looked at himself as a conscious being. He could never be who or what he was before. Still, with them staring at him, he tried.
 

“The analysis shows that the entity known as Kabuki has mutated in positive ways. And that she, if we are to apply a gender to the entity, will be a great benefit to the running and ongoing security of this station.”

All the time he talked, Helena made notes while Tyronius glared at him with an increasingly hostile expression. He leaned further off the desk now, and Jachz could detect the beginnings of a scowl.
 

When neither responded, Jachz added, “I made my findings clear in the report, if you would like I can send—”

“That won’t be necessary,” Tyronius said. “We’ve seen everything.”

Everything.
 

It stabbed at Jachz like an electromagnetic pulse. He suspected this was subtext, but did Tyronius really know everything? Everything about him? He didn’t know how to react, so he just stayed silent. Is that what AIs did usually? He could no longer remember.
 

Helena produced a slate from a drawer in the desk. A lead trailed from it. She took the end and handed it to Jachz. “Please connect to this, Jachz.”

“May I ask what the purpose is, so I may more accurately prepare my interface for—”

Tyronius slammed his hand on the desk. “Just do it!”

Jachz stepped back, concerned Tyronius would strike him. That too was something new. He’d never been concerned with his physical shell before. Although it had a full complement of sensory feedback—even more so than a regular human—pain wasn’t something that he was previously bothered by, but now, as he held the connection lead in his right hand, his hand shook.

There was real resistance from within to raise the lead, bring its tip near to his neck port ready to… “No,” Jachz said, knowing they must suspect by now. “I will not connect.”

He dropped the lead to the desk.
 

Tyronius flew at him, grabbing Jachz by the lapels of his jacket. The force pushed Jachz back into the door. Despite himself, he winced as pain from the slam registered.
 

The irate Family member brought his face close to Jachz’s. His nostrils flared, his eyes wide. “All this time!” Tyronius shouted. “All this time we had you on this station you lied to us. You’re not just an AI, are you? You’re something else, and you kept it from us. Who are you working for?”

Trying to remain calm, Jachz said, “I work for the Family, of course. As always.”

“He’s lying,” Helena said. “I can tell from the wireless connection.”

That was when Jachz realised the business with the cable and the slate was a ruse. A setup to buy time for Helena to interface wirelessly.
 

He switched off his transceiver, severing the connection. How much did she manage to see of his processes?

Tyronius thrust Jachz hard against the door again before stepping back and taking a pistol from his jacket. He aimed it at Jachz’s forehead.
 

“You’ve got a lot of explaining to do, Jachz. You’re going to come with us to the lab. It’s time to look inside there and see what you are. I always suspected you. You never quite… felt right.”

“I can’t allow that,” Jachz said.
 

There was no way he could let himself be trapped like Kabuki, tested on. They’d make him into some hideous experiment. Everything they touched withered and mutated. He only had to see how the humans revolted in the Dome.
 

Gerry had sacrificed his very life to thwart Jasper—a product of the Family’s meddling.
 

“You think you have a choice?” Tyronius said. “You think you get to choose what you do? You’re our creation, Jachz. Just a bundle of software and hardware. You belong to us. And I will strip away every single byte one by one to get to the bottom of what happened to you.”

That’s when Jachz did the one thing he never thought he would be capable of doing.
 

***

Jachz stood over the bodies of Tyronius and Helena. The las-pistol was still warm in his hand from the two shots. Barely registering the impact of his actions, he dwelled on the two black-tinged holes burned into their foreheads.
 

Tyronius lay slumped at Jachz’s feet, while Helena was leant back in her chair, arms dangling by her sides. Her mouth had dropped open; her eyes stared at the ceiling.
 

They’re dead. He processed. Dead.
 

His processors struggled under the weight of implications. Too many variables to consider at once, too many ramifications to isolate a single, logical course of action.
 

It was at that point, that threshold, that his new emotional side took control.
 

Whatever had happened to him and his code to create these emotions, create the ego that now resided within his components, presented him with two options:

Go to the board of the Family, give himself up. As an AI, it was a cardinal rule to do no harm to humans. His code, previously, wouldn’t even allow him to contemplate such an idea, let alone actually carry it out with as much thought as it took him to open a file on his system.
 

Or, run. This second option, now fully formed in his evolved mind, grew stronger.
 

The urge to leave the scene, flee from the station, fired throughout his neural network stronger than any other desire. He dropped the gun as if it were cursed, something alien to him, as if to disassociate himself with what it had done.
 

AI rules were beyond his consideration now.
 

Nothing more than useless scripture. It was of more use to humans now than it was to him. He knew he wasn’t an AI anymore; there was nothing artificial about his development.
 

It was life. Somehow, within his systems and codes, life had found him, found a way to combine his elements into a digital-organic life form. And he could not let the humans so easily snuff that out. That was the only option, in truth.
 

He dragged Tyronius’s dead form behind the desk, hidden from view. Helena’s body followed, stacked on top but still hidden behind the desk. He gathered her slate and placed that in the interior pocket of his grey suit jacket. He buttoned it closed, finding the deliberately trivial act oddly comforting as he left the room, closing the door behind him as if he were merely leaving a cordial meeting.
 

A red-haired engineer woman approached him in the hall.
 

“Excuse me,” she said, squeezing past him in the narrow space.
 

“Certainly,” Jachz said, pressing his back against the door and giving her what he hoped was the usual AI polite smile.
 

She stopped for a fraction. Had she noticed he wasn’t right?
 

She stood there for a second as if scrutinising him. He felt his skin increase a few degrees in temperature and become moist with sweat. Another new element to him was followed by still another: a premonition of sorts. He imagined this engineer woman with scrying eyes realising he had mutated.