Code Breakers Complete Series: Books 1-4 (80 page)

Gabe leaned forward over the workbench and removed the connecting cable from Alpha, removing the server from Shelley’s network. He then moved around the workbench and reached behind the holoscreen setup. He lifted the power supply and smashed it on the floor.

“What the hell are you doing?” Shelley launched up from her stool, reaching over her head to grab one of her many tools hanging from the ceiling. She grabbed a scalpel and thrust it towards Gabe’s neck.
 

He was already anticipating such an action. He leant backwards, making her swipe miss his neck. With one hand he grabbed her wrist, twisting it until she dropped the knife with a yelp. Having control of her wrist, and with her being off balance, Gabe pulled her arm, bringing her falling face-first onto the workbench with a thud.
 

Gabe leaned in, all the while holding her to the bench.

“I’m not in the goddamned mood to screw around, so you’ll listen to me, or I swear to whatever god you pray to that I’ll end your miserable life right here and now. Ya understand?” Gabe leaned his weight down onto her, crushing her face into the metal surface.
 

“Gabe? What the hell?” Petal said from the doorway.
 

With his free arm, he held out his hand, palm up. “Stay out of it, girl.”

Shelley squirmed beneath his weight, but couldn’t get free.
 

“I said, do ya understand?”

Shelley choked out a sound that resembled the word ‘yes’.
 

“Good. Now ya listen to me real close, and ya might just survive the day. Those quad-bikes outside, are they in full running condition, and do ya have the fuel cells for ’em?”

Another choked ‘yes’ followed.
 

“Here’s the deal,” Gabe said, softening his voice just a little. “We’re gonna borrow those quads. We’re gonna get the parts ya need. Ya’re going to fix Alpha, and then we’ll leave ya in peace. Your network is compromised. I did ya a favour. When ya hold up your end of the deal, I’ll explain more. For now, ya’ll thank me for saving ya. Do ya understand?”

He eased his weight off her, let her lift her head off the workbench. She didn’t speak, just nodded, her eyes wet with pain and hatred. That he could deal with. It was too late for any careful and polite dealing. It was time to get things done.
 

Using Petal to guard Shelley, Gabe took the parts of Alpha from the workbench and packed them in the original orange flight case. Using two further cases, he packed three days’ worth of food and water and loaded the cases onto the quad bikes. The fuel cells would be good for at least a week’s worth of running.
 

However sick and twisted Shelley was, there was no denying she was a damned good engineer. Somehow she’d cobbled together enough of a solution to bypass the bike’s EMP-fried circuitry and get them running again.
 

Once packed and ready, he rejoined Petal and Shelley in the plane.
 

“We’re ready to go,” he said.
 

Shelley still gave him the stink-eye, but she seemed happier with the situation once Petal had explained more, and they’d agreed to leave the inactivated transcendent behind. Gabe had promised he would activate it on his return.
 

Of course he had no such intentions. He fully planned to return it to Enna.
 

He knew he should feel some kind of remorse for screwing Shelley over, but each time he felt that, he remembered back to the last time they were here. Remembered finding the pile of rotting bodies, their skins hanging on a wire to dry in the arid conditions. Remembered Shelley’s sick grin as she planned on relieving him and Petal of their own skins. No, she was not one to have pity for, nor feel remorse for. She was a monster, even more so than Gabe.
 

That was the status of this world now: a hierarchy of the monstrous.

Petal had joined him at the quad-bikes. They’d found goggles and gloves in the bikes’ storage compartments. The H-core engines—part electric, part combustion—fired up with their distinctive low-growling whine. Gabe looked over to Petal. “Ya ready?”
 

She gave him the thumbs-up, and together they drove off and left the compound. Shelley stood in the open doorway of her plane. He could feel the hate in her eyes as she watched them leave.
 

He revved the quad-bike and sped off into the distance, overtaking Petal, enjoying the sense of speed and danger, trying to forget himself for a few minutes, forget the memories, live in the now.

Petal chased him down, and together they rode side by side.
 

She smiled at him, and he smiled back. At least she was one thing he could count on. No matter what he did in his past, she always had his back. And with the threat of Gerry’s code inside her mutating, he knew that getting Alpha fully operational so they could successfully extricate Gerry, and hopefully destroy Elliot, would be the one thing he would happily die trying to achieve.
 

And if they couldn’t do it that way, then at least he’d try his luck with Xian—if he hadn’t died of poisoning already. Gabe and Petal were there a year ago, and he wasn’t looking well then. Still, even if he had died, at least his gear should still be there, unless the scavengers had found him.

Chapter 12

James Robertson pushed his way through the burgeoning crowd outside the presidential building. Up and down the road, citizens were protesting, some with placards calling for the return of the citywide network and the D-lottery, others with signs denouncing the new government.
 

A middle-aged man with a hooded coat stood on the steps, looking back at the braying populace. James noticed an ugly scar on the man’s wrist—a sign of a ronin—when he thrust out his arms, pointing at the people, instructing them of the incompetency of Fuentes’ leadership.
 

She’d only been in the position a few weeks; what more could they have expected? She was a capable, charismatic leader, not a miracle worker. James shook his head. He understood that there would be some friction as the new government got the city working efficiently again, but to be protesting so soon and to return to the days of the D-Lottery and the all-encompassing network just seemed so out of step with what he thought these people would want.

They were free now. The city was free. Why go back?
 

Pushing his way to the front, James stared at the man as he passed him. There was an edginess to this protest leader. His features were sharp, cruel even. James had no doubt he was one of the group that were dealing the chips. He considered performing an arrest, taking him to security, but the latter were standing inside the glass doors, watching the proceedings.
 

The atmosphere was tense; if he did anything to aggravate the protestors, he feared they would riot and storm the building. Better to let them shout and wave their signs. It’d buy the government time to get to the root of these chips and settle the citizens.
 

Two security women opened the door for him when he flashed his dermal implant across the ID scanner. He nodded to them as he passed, heading for his office. The building had a wide-open lobby, all glass and white polished surfaces. Five graphite pillars arranged in a wide star formation stretched up ten metres to the next floor. A great staircase made from marble wound up the various levels on the left-hand side of the lobby.
 

An elliptical wood-effect desk sat in the middle of the pillars, behind which, waiting for him with a smile, sat Imogen, the concierge.
 

James approached, smiling warmly. She had always been so polite and helpful to him when so many others, Sasha and some of the other governors, had shown him a cold shoulder. They still blamed him for the ’droids being hacked and controlled by the Red Widows.
 

Still, he was on edge since Petal had left with Gabe. Although he had given Petal plenty of capacity to hold AIs and malicious code, Gerry’s mind was far larger, and Enna’s experiment with the transcendent had gone spectacularly wrong.
 

He just hoped they could fix Alpha. Because with Elliot—or what was left of him in his posthuman, uploaded consciousness, still somewhere out there—and these ronin becoming more numerous within the city, they would need both Petal’s and Gerry’s skills and the server in order to put a stop to it all. Adding to his worries, he hadn’t heard from Sasha for nearly a day. That was not normal, even with their strained relationship of late.

Despite her feelings towards him, they still communicated often. Mostly work-related, but it was something. It was a start, a small building block from which he could start mending relations, rebuild the close bond they had once shared.
 

Not having her with him like before in Criborg left a void in his soul, like one of his ’droids: almost functional, but missing an essential piece that made him whole.
 

“Doctor Robertson,” Imogen said.

James stopped at the desk. “Yes? What have you got for me today, Imogen?”

“President Fuentes is waiting in her room for you. She said to tell you it’s urgent government business.”

“Thank you. I’ll be right up.”

Fuentes’ room was on the third floor. He could take the elevator, but with a skip in his step, the anticipation of another secret tryst gave him the energy to take the stairs. He also wanted to check if Sasha had returned. She wasn’t responding to his messages, and their VPN connection had failed some hours earlier.

The way she stormed from the boardroom before made him think she’d disconnected their private network in spite. Stopping at the second floor and taking a quick breather, he made his way to Sasha’s room. He passed his wrist implant across it; the mechanism chirped, clicked, and the door swung open. Empty.
 

He stepped inside and investigated further, calling out, “Sasha, you here?”
 

No answer.
 

Her bed was still made, and a change of clothes from the laundry service sat on the edge of the bed. Hadn’t she been back all night? She was probably in the city centre, or maybe with Malik, but a sense of unease bubbled up inside his chest.
 

He told himself it was nothing; she was a capable girl. Still, the anxiety remained, stuck to his lungs like grease. He took the slate from the top of her nightstand and wrote a message.

Sasha,

I’m worried. It’s probably nothing, but you seemed upset with me, and I’ve not heard from you. Even if you’re angry with me, please let me know when you get this message if you’re okay.

Love,

James.

It wasn’t ideal, but at least it was something. She would, hopefully, get the message and realise he still cared for her, still looked out for her, wanted her safe.
 

Placing the slate back on the nightstand, he left the room, locked the door behind him, and focussed on the next order of business: Fuentes.
 

Within a minute he’d climbed the steps to her suite. A pair of security men stood at the front of the entrance hall that lay before her room. Recognising him instantly, on account of the regularity of his visits, they instantly relaxed when he approached, smiled, and opened the double wooden doors for him.
 

“Thank you, gentleman,” James said.

They nodded, hiding sly grins.
 

Did they know? Had they guessed with all his visits what was going on? Even if they did, he and Fuentes weren’t doing anything wrong. He passed through the doors, aware of a prickling heat dappling his neck and cheeks. The stain of embarrassment. But he didn’t care. He’d been so alone for so long now. Decades without real female company aside from his clones, who had now deserted him—Petal going off with Gabriel, who seemed to be more of a father figure to her than James could ever be, and now Sasha blanking him. Perhaps that was the way of things. Perhaps as a kind-of-parent, this splitting was inevitable.
 

It still hurt regardless, but Fuentes’ attentions helped take the sharpness off that particular knife. Blunted its edge so that the pain was bittersweet. As he approached the door to her private suite from the long hall, the sun shining through the tall windows, he felt that same tingle of excitement each time he made this journey.
 

Every step adding to the anticipation.
 

The first time came from far out of his vision. He was there, in her suite, going over some security protocols for the new service when she just stopped what she was doing and unbuttoned her jacket, letting it fall to the floor to expose her beautiful, naked body.
 

It was raw and quick, both hungry for each other, for the release. All the pent-up tension from working sixteen hour days to build a new government unwinding in a single, wild frenzy of lust.
 

His palms were hot and damp with sweat as he gripped the door handle. He pushed it down and entered the room. There she was, in a white, tight-fitting, lace negligee, lying seductively on the bed, one leg crossed over the other. She wasn’t wearing panties. His eyes followed the lines of her slim limbs, from her feet to her ankles, up her calves and thighs to the dark shadow of her sex.