Zero echo shadow prime, p.17
Zero Echo Shadow Prime, page 17
Charlie suddenly realized how exposed Liam had become. She looked up and confirmed her fear—a glowing red dot danced on his forehead. “Liam!” She hooked her hands around his head and pulled hard. Liam growled but quickly became aware of the danger when a patch of gravel erupted behind him. He inhaled and, in one quick motion, swiveled and dropped to the ground, using his back to form a protective barrier in front of Charlie.
Another shot rang out. Liam jolted forward with a grimace as the bullet struck his vest. A third shot seemed to miss him completely. Then—silence.
Liam rested his forehead against Charlie’s. His shallow breath warmed her cheek. He lifted his head slightly to search her face, as if to ask, Why did you save me? Charlie didn’t have an answer, though her heart raced at the thought he was still in danger.
“Andrew!” Nicola belted out. “If you don’t come out, my partner will snap your daughter’s neck!”
Charlie’s eyes widened, but Liam silently repudiated his sister’s threat with a slight headshake. His lips hovered so close above hers. Charlie’s unexpected and shameful urge to close the gap made the moment even more difficult to bear. Her eyes flooded with burning tears. “Please, Liam,” she whispered. “Let’s just go. I don’t want to do this.”
Liam’s brow wrinkled and his head drifted in thought. He was about to say something when Nicola shouted in the distance, “Toss the gun!” Both Liam and Charlie directed their attention to the mansion.
Andrew Nobunaga stepped onto the front porch, holding a sniper rifle above his head. He tossed it into the nearby bushes. Nicola kept her gun trained on him as she rapidly closed the distance. “On your knees you son of a bitch!” Andrew didn’t resist, nor did he flinch when she threw a pair of handcuffs at him.
Charlie pulled Liam’s face in her direction. “You said you wouldn’t let her hurt him!”
“I said I wouldn’t let her hurt you, but look…” He gestured toward the middle of the lawn, where Jesse lay motionless. Liam then threw off his vest and rubbed the spot between his shoulder blades, where the bullet had struck.
“Are you okay?” Charlie asked.
Liam didn’t acknowledge her. He just reached down and hooked his arms underneath her back.
Charlie squirmed away from him. “Please…”
“I can pick you up, or I can drag you.” He spoke in monotone, choosing not to exhibit any kind of emotional reaction.
A cold panic filled Charlie’s lungs. Whatever connection she had shared with Liam a moment ago was now lost. She allowed him to scoop her off the ground, but every muscle in her body tensed in rebellion.
The grounds were quiet again. Kepler and his soldier Shadows had dematerialized, and Nicola had forced Andrew into the house. Liam’s boots struck the ground hard as he hurried toward Jesse’s body. He no longer exhibited any signs of pain, and, if anything, he favored his bad leg.
Charlie shrieked when she saw Jesse. The boy’s face was a still portrait of fear. The hole in his forehead was clean, with just a thin red trail disappearing into his mop of curls. Liam’s own face fell ashen, and Charlie could tell what gripped his attention. The handgun. Jesse died because he was holding Liam’s handgun.
* * *
Liam carried Charlie into the third-floor observatory. The AR projector was currently off, so it was just a barren white dome with an empty computer desk and a few office chairs, but in Charlie’s fondest memories, the room was a window to the universe. This was where her father had taught her how to identify the constellations. This was where she had chatted with Bridge for hours while staring at the night sky. Charlie suspected that a wholly different kind of memory was about to be imprinted, and she shuddered at the thought.
Nicola leaned against the desk, wiping blood from her knuckles with the bottom of her shirt. Andrew was strapped to one of the chairs. A purple bruise had formed around his left eye, and blood flowed from his nose.
“Dad! Are you okay?” Charlie asked.
Andrew nodded. “Did they hurt you?”
Charlie shook her head. It was a lie, of course, but her father looked so furious and distraught, she didn’t want to worry him any further. Liam lowered Charlie into a chair and reattached her handcuffs to the armrest.
It wasn’t long before Yuri stormed into the room. “What the hell happened out there!? Jesse got shot!”
“This whole mission was a mistake,” Liam muttered.
“We got Andrew,” Nicola pointed out. “That’s the most important thing.”
“Christ, Nicola! We fucked up!” Yuri slapped his forehead and tugged at his hair, nearly pulling it out. The flight team quietly shuffled in, careful not to rile Yuri further, and lined the perimeter of the observatory. “Well, I do have good news to report,” Yuri continued, calming slightly. “Apparently, the bird has left its cage.”
“Thank God for small favors,” Nicola said. “Then we’ll revert to the original plan.”
Charlie perked up. Bird? Cage? “Are you talking about my sister? What are you planning—?”
“Shut up or I’ll gag you,” Nicola snapped.
“You can’t talk to her like that,” Andrew said.
Nicola grinned. “You don’t seem to be in a position to stop me.”
Andrew’s eyes burned with pure hatred, but somehow he managed to swallow his indignation and tilt his head high. “Why don’t you tell me what you want so we can get you on your way?”
“I want the code to your space fleet.”
Andrew laughed, spraying his blood. “You should have told me that at the gate. I would have said it’s impossible. The fleet requires two sets of codes for remote access. My partner has the other set, and he’s been instructed never to give it to me under any circumstances.”
“Honeybee, dodo, leather, digit, ear, poster, farmer, combat, sex, potato, message, chess. That’s the other code, in case you were curious.”
Andrew forced a smile. He held his fear well, but Charlie could see through his facade. His negotiation power was dwindling by the minute.
“Charlie isn’t the only hacker in this room,” Nicola said. “And at any rate, you aren’t going to give us the code. She is.”
“What?” Charlie blurted. “I don’t have the code.”
“I think we both know that’s bullshit.”
Nicola was right, of course. Over the years, Charlie had figured out all of her father’s passwords—to his ships, his smart cells, his estate. She even knew his gym locker combination. Still, the question remained: “If I had it, why would I give it to you?”
“Liam?”
Liam lifted his head with a long, weary sigh. He clearly wished he were anywhere but in this room. “We’re on the same side, Charlie. You don’t realize that yet, but once you hear your father’s secret, you will.”
“Whatever he’s done, it won’t change a thing,” Charlie said.
Nicola jabbed Andrew’s temple with her index finger. “Why don’t you tell her? She deserves to know.”
Andrew just stared at her with cold, hateful eyes.
“Either you tell her, or I do.”
“Whatever you think you know, you know nothing,” Andrew said. “You have no idea what I went through, as a father, as a husband. You have no clue what informed my decisions.” His expression hardened, and after a few seconds it was clear he was not going to say more.
“Okay,” Nicola said. “People consistently underestimate the Sapien Movement, but that’s fine…we like it that way. The Movement has eyes everywhere, and we especially like to keep a careful watch on corporations and government agencies that do not have humanity’s best interests at heart. Several months ago, the DOD posted a very lucrative contract for a new AI weapon system. For a while, it looked like Bethea, with their state-of-the-art robotics facility, was going to win the bid. But at the last minute, Bethea merged with Rivir, and together they won the bid, though with Rivir’s executive staff at the helm. So we wondered: What changed to give Rivir the upper hand? Well, another significant event happened shortly thereafter. Charlie Nobunaga became the first candidate for a human brain upload. Then it all made sense.”
“My dad brokered the merger in exchange for the upload,” Charlie said. “So what? I already figured as much.”
“I wasn’t finished,” Nicola said. “If you go back even further, two years ago to the summer of ’43, Rivir hired a team of simulation engineers and designers and purchased a ton of new hardware. This gave rise to the speculation that they were expanding their presence in the Walkable Web. But that didn’t happen, so we looked into it. As it turns out, this was groundwork for a massive genetic programming experiment, code-named Project ECHO—”
“ECHO?” Charlie asked.
“You’ve heard of it?”
“Just the name.” Charlie recalled Jude’s facility tour. A sign reading ECHO hung above one of the doors in Rivir’s R&D hub. Jude had been very stingy about the details.
“ECHO is an enormous simulation,” Nicola said. “We’re talking the size of planet Earth with atomic resolution. Originally, it was designed to create superior robots. But after Rivir won the DOD contract, they tweaked it for a military application. The genetic programming methodology, however, remained consistent. I’m guessing you’re familiar with the concept?”
Charlie nodded apprehensively. She didn’t like where this story was going.
“Take a billion or so random chunks of code, place them in a competitive environment, and they will evolve into useful programs,” Nicola stated. “Like Darwin for software. That’s how it usually works, but ECHO adds a twist. It isn’t evolving random chunks of code. It’s evolving copies, or ‘echoes,’ of a human archetype. You, Charlie.”
“That’s a lie!” Andrew barked.
Nicola smiled. “You deny it?”
“Yes, I do.” Andrew gripped the armrests of his chair and exhaled sharply. Then he withdrew a little. “I mean…the ECHO Project…it exists, but it’s not processing Charlie’s Atlas. It’s…” His voice trailed off, and his attention shrank inward.
“What, Dad?” Charlie prodded.
For a moment, Andrew appeared as if he hadn’t heard Charlie. He just took shallow breaths and kept a fixed gaze on the floor. Then he turned to his daughter and said, “It’s processing Alan.”
Charlie’s eyes widened in horror.
“You were dying,” Andrew quickly added. “Jude was considering other candidates. I had to sweeten the deal.”
Rage filled Charlie so quickly it felt like she was drowning. The room faded to black, and she plummeted into an abyss, where she had no other option but to face the unimaginable: Alan…her friend…her child…fed to the simulation like factory meat. Her father had no idea. When Charlie came up for air, she was already numb, exhausted from the burst of emotion. “Do you have any comprehension of what you’ve done?” she asked her father.
“I assume they’ll turn him into a fighter drone of some kind. Or a ground soldier.”
“You should have told me! It’s nothing like putting Alan in a drone.” Charlie might have been upset with Alan, but he didn’t deserve this fate. No sentient being did. “They are going to transform him—slowly, painfully, in grotesque ways, and they are going to do it a billion times over. Do you know how much suffering—?”
“They didn’t go with Alan,” Nicola interrupted.
“Huh?”
“They didn’t go with Alan. Maybe they were considering him for a while, but Jude didn’t choose him. She chose you.”
Charlie swallowed hard. This was all too much for her. She wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or incensed.
“You’re wrong,” Andrew said, but he no longer sounded so certain.
“Don’t be so naive,” Nicola said. “Do you really think Jude, when given the choice between Charlie’s Atlas—the most sophisticated code ever produced, leagues beyond anything that came before it because it was modeled after a real human brain, which itself is the culmination of billions of years of biological evolution—and Alan—who’s basically a glorified science fair project—she would choose the science fair project?”
Andrew’s defiant glare withered. His eyes sank to the floor.
“You signed away all rights to Charlie’s Atlas,” Nicola continued, “knowing full well that this was a possibility? That Jude would drop it into her ECHO Project? Or her SHADOW line? Or maybe she would decide to sell it to a research firm? Or a lovebot manufacturer? Or a mining company? Seriously, I’m stunned. None of this crossed your mind?”
Andrew gnashed his teeth but kept his head down. He wasn’t acting like his usual self. In both his business and personal life, he always fought criticism and dissidence, even when he was wrong. Especially when he was wrong.
“So, Charlie, now you know what your father has done,” Nicola said. “And we intend to correct his mistakes. But to do that, we need to take command of his space fleet. Consider it poetic reparations.”
Charlie was furious at her father. He never listened to her. Ever. She couldn’t recall a time when he had yielded to her judgment. But now, for the first time, he seemed to be fully aware of his error. He hung in his chair, despondent, ashamed to look at her. He hadn’t responded like this even when Bridget died. Or her mother. He had been strong for so long, but the facade had finally cracked.
Charlie shifted her attention to Nicola, who beamed in the center of the room with her gloating, self-satisfied grin. The Sapien obviously thought she’d won, and Charlie loathed her for it. “So my father’s an idiot,” she said. “You think I’m going to betray him now? Fuck you!”
Nicola’s brow twisted in confusion. She turned to Liam, who seemed equally puzzled. He placed his hand on Charlie’s shoulder.
Charlie shrugged him away. “You were right, Liam. This mission was a mistake. My father’s not the enemy.”
“I was hoping I wouldn’t have to do this,” Nicola said. “Yuri?”
Yuri unzipped a fabric case containing several syringes. Each one bore a different colored solution. He selected the red syringe and walked over to Charlie.
“What is that?” Andrew asked, eyeing the syringe.
“Special concoction,” Nicola replied. “Don’t worry, it doesn’t kill people. Just makes them feel very, very uncomfortable. But who knows? Charlie’s health hasn’t been the greatest lately.”
Yuri pulled Charlie’s head to the side, exposing her neck arteries. The cold tip of the needle broke through her skin. He was about to depress the plunger when Liam grabbed him by the wrist. “She’s suffered enough,” Liam said, meeting Yuri’s glare. He took possession of the needle and pulled it out of Charlie’s neck.
Liam locked eyes with his sister as he walked over to Andrew. Nicola sneered but didn’t stop him. Liam grabbed a tuft of Andrew’s hair and pulled his head back.
“No!” Charlie pleaded.
Liam held the needle against Andrew’s neck and waited for Charlie to continue.
She wanted to shout out the password, but her lungs deflated each time she tried to dredge the words. The Lotus space fleet was her father’s life achievement, the result of decades of sacrifice.
“It’s okay, Charlie.” Andrew’s voice began to quaver. He fought back his tears. “I made a terrible, terrible mistake. I don’t wish to make another. Kepler, spin, all eyes.”
Johannes Kepler spun into the room. “Yes, Andrew?” the Shadow inquired.
“Please give these people access to my fleet.”
Liam released Andrew’s hair and flippantly tossed the syringe to the floor. He passed his sister in silence, deciding not to use the opportunity to gloat.
“Are you sure, Mr. Nobunaga?” Kepler asked.
“I’ve made my decision,” Andrew insisted. “Do anything they say.”
Kepler entered Andrew’s code into the network. Nicola recited the second set she’d stolen from Andrew’s partner. The room’s AR projector turned on. The white dome dissolved into a starscape.
Planet Earth loomed large from the south side of the dome. The much smaller Pacific Space Port hung on the north side. The PSP was a basic spherical space station with five docking arms, one for each of the five international companies who invested in the facility: Australia’s Julpan; India’s Jet Airways; China’s Gold Wing; Russia’s Kolesnitsa; and Andrew’s Lotus, representing the US.
One of the flight team members clapped his hands. “Fuck yeah!” he exclaimed to no one in particular.
Nicola turned to them. “I want you four to go into the dining room and each grab a chair. And bring an extra one for Yuri.” They nodded and left the room.
Nicola turned to Yuri. “Hand me a thinking cap.” Yuri pulled one from his bag and handed it to her. It was a black cotton cap with a chinstrap and white electrodes evenly spaced throughout. She showed the cap to Kepler. “This is a Kirchstein THC-3900D. Will it interface with the ships?”
“It should,” the Shadow said.
After a couple minutes, the flight team returned with their chairs. Yuri handed each of them a cap, and they all formed a semicircle in the center of the room.
“What do you plan to do with my ships?” Andrew asked.
“You’ll see,” Nicola said dismissively. “Kepler, I want you to assign Lotus One to Yuri, the man with the mustache. Then go clockwise around the circle and assign the other four. Each cap gets a ship. Is that clear?”
“Yes,” Kepler replied.
Yuri strapped the cap onto his head and closed his eyes. “I’m in,” he said.
Charlie looked over to Pacific Space Port and saw Lotus One leave the dock. The other four ships followed shortly afterward. Consistent with the company name, the ships resembled steel lotus buds, with a trio of rocket thrusters at the stern. The "lotus petals" were currently closed, but Charlie knew they opened to reveal a transparent, nanofiberglass cabin, allowing the traveler to see 180 degrees of the surrounding starscape. She admired the design, especially since many of the other ships at PSP looked like glorified limousines. Why couldn’t the Sapiens hijack those?
