Zero echo shadow prime, p.24
Zero Echo Shadow Prime, page 24
Suddenly, the music stopped. A murmur rose out of the crowd. Valerie had almost forgotten about Jordan when she noticed his cortisol spike in the periphery of her awareness. She scanned the floor and found him standing on the other side of the club with a look of absolute terror. For some reason, his gaze focused to the left of her. When she traced his line of sight, it was already too late. Her torso was caught by the jaws of a great white shark.
The crowd erupted in applause, drowning out Valerie’s cries of pain. The shark slammed her against the glass wall of the fishbowl and then migrated back toward the center, violently shaking Valerie side to side along the way and creating a trail of blood behind it.
No one suspected that the trespassing Shadow was in agony, including Jordan, who was horrified nonetheless by the macabre display. But Valerie could feel every puncture mark in her belly. She could feel the blood run up her esophagus, causing her to choke. The pain sapped her of wit; the only thing she could think to do was beat the shark’s head with her fists. But the shark eventually won the struggle and tore her completely in half—to the crowd’s jubilation. Valerie’s blood and entrails slowly expanded to fill the fishbowl, provoking “Ooohhs,” “Aaahhs,” and “Ewwws” from the delighted spectators. It was only then, as the lower half of her body was being consumed by the shark and the top half of her body floated helplessly in the crimson water, that she gained enough presence of mind to dematerialize.
The crowd booed, disappointed that its show had ended so abruptly, and the music resumed. A team of three bouncers surrounded Jordan. They made it clear without saying a word that he was no longer welcome in the club.
Jordan exited the club and crossed the street. “Valerie, spin, my eyes,” he said.
She spun out of the sidewalk, whole again, but crying uncontrollably. Her body was shaking. Jordan moved to embrace her, but she shied away.
“Talk to me,” he said. “How do you feel?”
“It was so bad,” Valerie cried.
“Are you in pain?”
“No, you don’t understand.”
“Make me understand.”
“It’s stupid. I’m stupid. I…I thought they were cheering for me.”
Jordan’s face softened with understanding. He tried to formulate an adequate response but was interrupted by a woman’s call, “Hey Shadow Man!” He turned his head and saw three female ravers across the street. They were fairly attractive, especially the one doing the talking. “Come over here,” she said. “We want to talk to you.”
“You should go over there,” Valerie said, wiping her tears. “Be with your own kind.”
“My own kind?” Jordan replied. “Now you are being stupid. The only person I want to be with right now is you.”
Valerie welled up again, this time not completely out of sadness.
13
PRIME
Charlie’s problems were spreading faster than she could contain them. Her father was dead. Her sister’s whereabouts were still unknown. The horrific creature at Control-Z was almost certainly borne from her Neural Net Atlas. Was it sentient? Was its mind as twisted as its body? Charlie shuddered at the thought. And to complicate everything, she was merely the copilot in her own body—subject to the whims of a certain Liam Byrne.
But things were about to change.
Liam drove up the Pacific Coast Highway in a hacked convertible. He hugged the cliff-side turns with brazen speed, expecting to return to his fellow Sapiens as a hero, but his arrogance had blinded him to Charlie’s machinations. She had picked the car. She had picked the route. And now she was ready to make her final move.
{Charlie_Nobunaga:mindspace> Charlie: I’ll ask you one last time to leave peacefully.
Liam: Please, not this again.
Charlie: I mean it. Bad things will happen if you don’t.
Liam: Do your worst.
Charlie: Very well.}
Liam noticed some celestial movement over the ocean.
{Liam: The moon is getting bigger. Wait, that’s a…but, I thought they…}
Charlie wished she could see Liam’s face as he made sense of the situation. He assumed the Pollys had run out of juice. He was correct about all but one: Alan’s Polly. After dropping Charlie in the bay, Alan had immediately flown the hijacked Polly above the cloud line. It had collected rays and conserved energy for three days while the rest of the Polly population tended to their policing duties.
Charlie connected with Alan on a hidden channel.
{Charlie: I am so happy to see you! I wasn’t sure if you heard my call.
Alan: What the hell happened? I saw the news. You were attacked by a squad of marines and a spider robot. And now I see you have a guest lurking in that brain of yours.
Charlie: It’s a long story.}
Charlie filled in the details about the Trojan horse virus, the other Alan’s sacrifice, and the drill bug with its hauntingly familiar eyes. Then she informed Alan of her plan to remedy the situation.
Alan complied by strengthening the Polly’s magnetic field. He hovered directly over the convertible and mirrored its path along the winding road. The headlights burst, the steel hood buckled, and the whole front of the car rose to the limit of its suspension.
{Liam: You’re doing this!?
Charlie: Having a change of heart?}
Instead of answering Charlie, Liam swatted at the Polly. Big mistake. His wrist bracelet snapped to the Polly plates in a magnetic seal. He secured his other hand around the steering wheel, but the distraction prevented him from noticing the oncoming turn. The convertible crashed through a guardrail and rocketed off the cliff. Liam didn’t let go of the wheel until they were halfway to the bottom. The Polly lifted him out of the driver’s seat and dangled him over the Pacific Ocean.
The convertible crashed against the shallow rocks below. Charlie forced herself to stay calm, despite the sweeping sensation of vertigo.
{Charlie: Now I have your undivided attention.
Liam: You’re fucking crazy!}
Liam tried to punch the Polly with his free hand, but that, too, fell victim to the magnetic grip. After some desperate gyrating, Liam gave up and relaxed his muscles.
{Liam: This accomplishes nothing, just like the time freeze. Another stalemate.
Charlie: Yeah, but now I can electrocute you.}
Charlie knew the Polly’s energy beam wouldn't affect her robotic body beyond a mild shock, but she guessed, or rather hoped, that Liam wouldn’t know that.
{Liam: You’d zap your own body?
Charlie: Oh, so now you agree with me—that it’s my body?
Liam: I mean, you’d damage your circuitry. Fry your brain.}
Charlie smiled inwardly. She had guessed right.
{Charlie: You don’t know me. I tried offing myself before. I could easily do it again.}
The threat was forged from a partial truth, but it was still a bluff. Charlie had no desire to kill herself now or ever again. She waited and prayed while Liam considered his options. After nearly a minute of unbearable silence, she got sick of waiting.
{Charlie: Liam, I just want what’s rightfully mine.
Liam: Sorry, but no.
Charlie: No?
Liam: The result’s the same either way: I fail my mission.
Charlie: But in one scenario, you go peacefully. In the other, you suffer excruciating pain.
Liam: I’ll take my chances.
Charlie: What the hell’s so important anyway? What’s your mission?
Liam: We need you to break into Rivir Tower.
Charlie: Why?
Liam: In the long term? We want to put Jude Adler behind bars, shame her legacy, and make sure no one else picks up the torch. In the short term, we plan to shut down the PRIME and ECHO Projects.}
Charlie obviously knew all about the PRIME Project, but she had only heard of the ECHO Project once before. The name was written on one of the doors in Rivir’s R&D hub. How the hell did Liam know about that?
{Charlie: Alan, can you release us at the top of the cliff?
Alan: I don’t think that’s a wise decision.
Liam: There’s a third person in here? Who the hell are you?
Charlie: Alan, it’s okay. If he tries to run, you can just scoop us back up.}
The Polly ascended the cliff and released the dangling robot onto solid ground. Charlie initiated a time freeze. The ocean air stopped blowing. The waves stopped lapping. The leaves stopped rustling.
Alan was the first to enter Shadow space. He spun out of the earth and kept a sharp watch on the robot. Charlie was next. Her mental avatar stepped out of the robot’s body. She turned to face it.
{Charlie: Come out. I want to talk to you face-to-face.
Liam: I told you. I’m not leaving this body.
Charlie: You’ll still technically be inside my head. This is just a mental projection of the environment.
Liam: It better not be a trick.
Charlie: If it were, I would have tried it a long time ago.}
Liam stepped out of the robot’s body. His avatar swelled to accurately represent his larger frame. His jaw was clenched, and he stared off into the distance with brooding eyes. He didn’t look like a bad person. If Charlie were completely honest with herself, Liam was strikingly handsome…and somehow familiar. Had she met him before? It wasn’t until he turned to face her that she remembered. The Rivir gala. He was the mysterious Sapien from beyond the red carpet.
Alan marched up to Liam and gave him a hard shove. “If you do anything I don’t like, I will make you suffer.” To illustrate his point, the Polly’s hexagonal plates broke apart and reassembled into a hyperbolic formation. It rotated its charge tunnel toward the robot’s chest.
“I’d like to hear what he has to say,” Charlie told her Shadow.
“I don’t trust him,” Alan said.
“Neither do I, but—”
“You told me yourself. He tried to kill you. Tried to wipe your brain clean.”
“It’s true,” Liam interjected. His sudden confession stole both Charlie and Alan’s attention. “I tried to kill you. But I didn’t realize you’d be so…so…”
“Stubborn?” Charlie offered.
“I was going to say human.”
Charlie scrutinized Liam’s face for any sign of guile, but she found none. His chestnut eyes were open and honest. “Good,” she said. “Finally we agree on something.” She crossed her arms and tried to maintain an assertive tone, but it had lost its bitter edge. “Now tell me about the ECHO Project.”
ZERO
Charlie envied Liam. He got to rest in a cozy hibernation chamber while she was forced to stay awake and make chitchat with a jubilant Sapien crowd. The ballroom reverberated with Mozart and the clinking of champagne glasses. Several members approached Charlie with icebreakers ranging from “You are an inspiration…” to “Writing a Shadow isn’t that hard…” to “You should really try the coffee enema…” Each time, Charlie smiled and nodded and thought, I need to get the hell out of here! Unfortunately, even if she had the stamina to leave, she was still handcuffed to her wheelchair.
Liam wasn’t exactly at peace himself. His eyes were closed but they darted around, similar to REM sleep. His lips formed undistinguishable words. His chest and arm muscles twitched rapidly. What was happening on the other side of that connection? What was he doing to PRIME? Charlie felt strangely drawn to Liam. She wanted to crawl inside the hibernation chamber, crawl inside his head, so she could be closer to him…and to her.
Charlie’s reverie was dashed by a plate of chicken. Someone placed it on the chamber’s glass door, obstructing Liam’s face from view.
“Damn it, Yuri!” Nicola moved the plate to a nearby chair. She hadn’t parted from Liam’s hibernation chamber—obsessively monitoring his vitals and making small adjustments on the console—since Charlie arrived.
“I assumed you wanted to eat at your desk,” Yuri said with a grin. He handed a second plate to Charlie. The meal looked impressive, consisting of roasted chicken, mashed potatoes with gravy, broccoli, and a warm biscuit with a half-melted pad of butter.
“I thought the Sapien Movement lived on ramen and canned tuna,” Charlie quipped.
“This is a celebration,” Yuri replied. “We’re winning the war.”
A plastic fork stuck out of the mashed potatoes. Charlie reached for it, but her hand snagged on the handcuffs. “Um, it’s kinda hard to eat with this on.”
“You’re smart. I’m sure you can figure it out.”
“Now, Yuri,” a deep, gravelly voice interjected, “that’s no way to treat our guest.” The voice belonged to Bob Sapio. He struggled to pull up a chair while juggling a plate of food and an old-fashioned clipboard.
“Let me help you,” Yuri said, rushing to the old man’s side.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Bob insisted, easing into his chair. “Is the broadcast room ready?”
The Sapiens were prepping for a big public announcement. No one mentioned a word to Charlie, but she couldn’t help but notice the camera crew tracking grip stands, lights, and banners through the living room. And now that Bob was sitting next to her, it was only a matter of time before he demanded her cooperation as the guest of honor.
“Almost,” Yuri said. “They’re just tweaking the lights. Trying to get it perfect.”
Bob sighed. “Then I suggest you light a fire under their posteriors.” Yuri nodded and headed for the door, but Bob stopped him. “Aren’t you forgetting something?” he said, pointing to Charlie’s handcuffs.
Yuri scowled as he fished the keys from his pocket. Charlie gave him a big grin in return. He released Charlie’s wrist, muttered some indignant curse under his breath, and trudged off.
“I apologize for the way you’ve been treated,” Bob told Charlie, wielding a chicken leg in his hand. “Kidnapped, moved from place to place, you probably had no idea what was happening until it happened. But I’d like to make amends.”
Charlie figured she’d come right out and say it: “I have no interest in being your mascot.”
Instead of taking offense, Bob gave a hearty chuckle. “You’re as sharp as they say. Mascot might not be the right word, if only for its negative connotations. I’d like to think of us as allies, and allies don’t keep secrets. Here.” Bob handed Charlie his clipboard.
She took a quick look at it and realized it was a speech. Her speech. “’My name is Charlie Nobunaga,’” she read aloud. “’The real Charlie Nobunaga. You’ve already seen the face of evil. Now I want you to see the face of good. Point to self.’”
“Don’t say that part,” Bob said. “Just point to yourself.”
Charlie put down the clipboard. “My sister is not evil.”
“Sister?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I know what you mean, but again, you should choose your words carefully. The more you personify the machines, the more likely you’ll start to believe they’re actual people.”
Charlie didn’t need a semantics lesson. “If you really want to make amends, you can start by answering my questions.”
“Very well. I think you deserve as much.”
“How did you take control of my sister?”
“That was Nicola’s brain child. She deserves all the credit. All I know is that she stole some Rivir software. You see, the smart cells that Rivir used to scan your brain are the conventional kind, the kind available to the general consumer. Rivir’s only real innovation was in their software, which tells the bots how to conduct the scan and interpret the data.”
“So she scanned Liam’s brain…and then what? How did she crack my sister’s defenses? And for that matter, what happened to my sister? Has she been erased? I assume Liam is controlling the robot remotely, or else why would he still be inside the hibernation chamber? Does that mean my sister is still conscious?”
“You don’t need to know,” Nicola interjected, having momentarily diverted her attention from Liam’s chamber.
Bob flung up his hands. “There you have it, the woman has spoken. To be perfectly honest, I don’t understand most of what she says anyway. But I can address the issue you raised of why Liam’s still in the box. Early in the planning process, we made a decision not to scan his entire brain. We certainly could have. We could have transferred Liam’s full Atlas into the robot, thereby creating a zombie surrogate of Liam in the same way Rivir created a zombie surrogate of you. But that, of course, would have undermined everything we stand for. We wanted Liam to steer the robot, not become it. So we only installed the parts of his brain vital to that purpose—mostly sensory perception and motor control. The rest of him is actively streaming from his true, God-given body, right here.”
Charlie’s instincts told her there was more to this story. How could a hacker with modest equipment take down the most advanced robot the world has ever known? Charlie wanted to press Bob further, but Nicola was giving her the stink eye, so she moved to another topic. “Now that you have my sister, what are you planning to do with her?”
“Didn’t you listen to my speech?” Bob replied.
Charlie hadn’t been paying strict attention to the speech, but she got the general gist. “You are going to use her to defame Jude Adler and shut down the ECHO Project.”
“Yes.”
“And then will you let us go?”
“I’d love to release you tonight, right after this broadcast. My only worry is that you’d betray our plans to our enemies. But after this war is over, I sincerely hope you’ll stay with us.”
Here it comes, Charlie thought. The recruitment pitch. “And why would I do that?”
