Free Radical (34 page)

Around him were the bent, burned remains of tables. A thought had been nagging him, eating away at some corner of his mind. It was his fault.

He had played the game for years, ripping off big corporations, screwing The Man, fighting the power. That's how he used to see it. Now the truth was obvious. He wasn't a hero. He wasn't Robin Hood. Sure, he took from the rich, but "rich" was anyone who had more than he did. He didn't give to the poor, he gave to himself.

Now he had the blood of hundreds of people on his hands. Sure, Diego was responsible too - but he was dead, and dead men don't share blame. Deck knew he couldn't point at some charred corpse and cry out "
He did it!
".

It was 
his fault
.

Then there was the other irony - that he survived. This was proof that his was a world without justice. He caused a disaster that killed hundreds (hundreds!) of innocents, and yet he alone - the one responsible - survived by chance. They had died, and they didn't even know why.

He had never really thought about God much, but he knew one thing: If there was a God, he was damned.

Nomen's words hit him again, "Its going to cost you more than you could ever imagine."

He pulled himself from this line of thought. It was just going to get him killed. He would deal with it once he'd escaped Citadel. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew he deserved to die up here.

He needed to talk to Rebecca.

Rebecca appeared, standing in front of her console, "Hacker? Oh my God. We figured you were dead. Where have you been for the last..," she glanced sideways, probably at the clock, "..eighteen hours?"

Eighteen hours?
That explained why his wounds had healed so much. "Hey, sue me. I needed the sleep."

She sat down in front of the camera and put her headset on. She was wearing her full uniform again. She seemed tense. Something was wrong. Well, more wrong than usual.

"We are still working on recovering the satellites that Shodan had taken over. We have reclaimed about half of them so far. Morris has been downloading the contents of their memory before we give them back to their users."

"I don't get it."

"These used to be part of Shodan's brain, right? We've taken them back, but some of her thoughts - or fragments of thoughts - are still in their data banks. Morris is downloading whatever was stored on them as a way of peeking inside of Shodan's head and seeing what she's up to."

"So what have you found?"

Her tone had changed. She had reverted to the cool, businesslike demeanor She was choosing her words carefully, "He's found some genetic codes and blueprints. Apparently, Shodan has been dabbling in genetic engineering. Morris said this was a favorite subject of hers in her early stages of development. The chip that was disabled prevented her from experimenting in this area, but it looks like she's taken it up again."

"You found this in the memory banks of the satellites?," Deck shot back.

"That's right. Morris found gene maps, theoretical design projections, and even images of some of the life-forms. It looks like Shodan has been breeding these things in one of the groves. I'm sending you a sample."

A short loop of video appeared. Deck wouldn't have known it was one of the groves if Rebecca hadn't told him. The walls were caked in a thick yellow fungus. Numerous small creatures moved through the frame. They were small, translucent, and crablike.

Deck twisted his face as he watched the same ten seconds of footage over and over. "What the hell is that?"

"We don't have the whole genome, only fragments, so we don't really know what it is. Brocail can give you some details if you like."

"Put him on."

The screen changed and the chubby face of Morris Brocail was in front of the console. Deck had assumed that there was just one console and that they were taking turns with it. Instead, there was more than one, but they simply looked identical. The view had switched over to Morris' console.

"Hey dude."

Deck was puzzled by Morris. How could someone capable of designing such and elegant speech synthesis system, and yet still communicate like a teenage moron? "What's up?," Deck asked.

Morris smiled. "Hey, I gotta ask you... I heard the hardware you're using right now to talk to us is all built into your head?"

"That's right."

"So you don't have any external equipment? You can contact us by just thinking about it?"

"That's pretty much it."

"That is so cool!," Morris was grinning like a kid.

"I like to think so," Deck answered wryly, "So what's the story with Shodan?"

"Well, like you saw, she's breeding some kind of new life forms in the northern grove. We don't have the whole genome on any of them yet, but we have some fragments, and we might be able to snag some more as we bring back some of these satellites."

"So this is what Shodan's been up to?"

"Genetic engineering was a favorite of hers during her development. She probably started on this as soon as you - er, as soon as the inhibitor chip was gone."

"Why is she so into genetic engineering?" Deck couldn't understand how a computer - even one like Shodan - could ever be "into" anything.

"It started with programming languages. We were working on a way to develop creativity, and that was a good place to start. We made a lot of progress in a short amount of time just teaching her how to code. She worked her way up from procedural stuff to modular coding, and finally outgrew all of the programming languages we could throw at her. She started developing her own languages to streamline the coding process for herself. Finally, she read about genetic code and that was all she wanted to do."

"Genetic code?"

"Look, DNA is just basically a really mega, mega complex program. It's complex enough to turn a single cell into any life-form you want, assuming you have the right input. She could just look at DNA and know what it was for. It just made sense to her. We encouraged her, and she did some amazing stuff. TriOp holds a bunch of patents based on stuff she taught us. Shodan was a super-secret project back then, and only a dozen people in the world were even allowed to know about her, so it was pretty tough explaining where all that knowledge came from."

Deck wondered how he was still even alive. How could he survive against something that smart? Shodan was clearly smarter than any human that had ever lived. He was alive because Shodan hadn't thought he was a threat, and because he was insanely lucky.

Morris continued, "So anyway, she was obsessed at how 'inefficient' most life-forms were. She was always re-coding DNA and running simulations on it."

"Inefficient?"

"Yeah, most species are like, designed with these fatal flaws that keep them in check. Humans are smart, but we're totally weak and our reflexes are crap. Ebola kills too quick and burns itself out. Other creatures are lethal killers but have complex mating habits that keep their numbers limited. Others just have short life spans. Shodan was always working on ways to 'correct' these flaws. She used to claim she could take any life-form and make it the dominant species on the planet with just a few changes."

"
Ebola
? Holy crap."

"What can I say? Efficiency is in her nature. So, we had to pull the plug on all of that. I think its a shame, but it was better than letting her play mad scientist. She was always obsessed with creating the 'ultimate' creature. You know, just this one life-form that had all the good stuff from every other species on the planet. Eyes like an eagle, night vision of an owl, strength and speed of a lion, reflexes of a jungle predator, brain of a human, able to reproduce like rabbits... you get the idea."

"So now she's free to take it up again, and that's what she's working on?"

"Its hard to say exactly what she's doing. She used to run computer simulations because she didn't have access to the facilities to actually test her theories. I think the north grove is now her sandbox, where she creates new stuff and releases to see how it does. We don't know what could be in there, but whatever it is, you definitely do not want to get any on you, if you see what I mean."

Deck nodded, "So, we need to blow this place up as soon as we can?"

"Rebecca will tell you about that."

The scene changed again, and he was looking at Rebecca. She was tense as she spoke, "Hacker, when we lost contact with you, we assumed you had died up there, and were getting set to blow up the station."

"What?," Deck couldn't believe they were finally going to blow the place up and were just going to do it with him still there.

She spoke in an even diplomatic tone, "That's why its important to keep contact. I know you value your freedom and independence, and we don't have a problem with that - but you need to let us know what's happening so things like that don't happen."

She was talking to him like he was some sort of madman who could go over the edge at any moment. Something had changed on their end. Their perception of him had shifted. Finally he responded, wanting to show them he was a reasonable guy, "Sure. I can understand that. Look, just don't blow me up and I'll keep you guys in the loop, ok?"

She nodded, and seemed satisfied, "That will be a big help. Now, we were getting set to nuke the station. We had a small tactical nuke ready and had begun the countdown when we received something from Citadel. It was the first time Shodan has made contact with us. She sent us a message. There was no text, just a single image,"

A moment later an image appeared in his head. It was a picture of the Earth and Citadel. Some wire-frame lines were superimposed onto the image. A thin red line ran from the side of Citadel and down a gentle curve to the surface of the Earth. The bottom was filled with numbers.

Deck shrugged, "I don't get it."

"This is a firing solution. The groves, you see, detach from the station. In the event of an emergency, they are to be used as escape pods for all of civilians on board. They just get in, and launch. The station's crew uses standard escape pods on the flight deck."

"So she's going to launch the North Grove at you? Why send you a warning, why not just do it?"

"Morris believes she doesn't want to launch it at us, at least not yet. This is her pet project, her grand experiment. She probably doesn't want to just launch it and have to start over in another grove."

"So what is this, then?"

"It's a threat. Look, this grove she has aimed at us could contain anything. It could have something ten times deadlier than Ebola. We just don't know. The point is, she is showing us that she has worked out a firing solution to drop this thing on New York. We think the message is: If we launch, she will too. Mutually Assured Destruction."

She paused, she was getting to the point now, and he could tell she was trying to ask him for something, "So now we need to take out that grove before we move against Shodan. If we do anything that threatens her, we risk having her dump that thing on our heads. It would be the most horrible biological attack ever conceived. Now, I know you have insisted that you do not work for TriOp. I don't want you to think -"

He could see where this was going. He cut her off, "I'll do it."

If he didn't know her, he wouldn't have even been able to see how shocked she was. There was a slight pause before she responded, "That's good news."

He smiled. There was no way of getting out of here alive without doing what she asked, but that wasn't why he was doing it. He looked around the cafeteria and thought about what had taken place here. This was his chance to make up for his mistake. He had risked his life and ended up killing hundreds. Now he had a chance to risk his life again and perhaps save millions. He couldn't say no.

This was his shot at redemption.

Rebecca's team needed time to look at the station design schematics and work out what needed to be done in order to eject Shodan's experimental grove. She had signed off while they worked out a plan, leaving Deck to prepare things on his end.

He decided he needed weapons. The only weapon he had at the moment was the short rifle he'd found in the freezer, and he was pretty sure it was broken.

The weapon was too large for the small holster built into his body sleeve. After some experimenting, he found he could secure it to his hip by moving the holster down his leg until it was positioned just above his knee. He then jammed the muzzle through the lower loop of the holster, and threaded the top loop of the holster through the trigger guard. It was a far from perfect fit. The rifle bounced around too much when he walked, but the arrangement gave him two free hands, and that was what was most important to him. He just hoped he wouldn't be needing it in a hurry.

He knew he needed some better weapons, or at least some weapons he knew how to use. There was a security station on the far side of the level. He decided that would be the best place to start looking.

The center of the level was a grid of living quarters that had housed the bulk of the station's crew. The units were divided into blocks - like prison blocks - and divided into groups based on rank and occupation. The low lighting made the already claustrophobic corridors feel even tighter and more oppressive.

He made his way through the cramped, narrow passages that made up the bulk of the crew section. The doors were spaced evenly, one every four meters, like rows of empty tombs. A few were open to reveal ransacked or bloodied quarters, but most were simply locked. Although the signs of combat and death were apparent, there were no bodies.

At the center of the living area was a nexus of corridors that converged on the main elevator. The elevator doors had been welded shut and poorly barricaded with benches and other loose items that were available. From this side of the door, he could see that it had also been heavily booby-trapped with hand grenades. The crude arrangement of tripwires and fragmentation grenades were set to go off if anyone inside the elevator tried to force the doors open. Deck was glad he hadn't messed with the door when he was stuck on the other side.