Authors: Joel Shepherd
"What the hell do you think you're doing!" a bearded whitecoat shrieked at her as she stormed into the central office, several of her people barging through adjoining doors. "You can't just come in here and terrorise people ..." He got right into her way, and Vanessa threw him one-handed across the room — propelled by suit armour he crashed and rolled, nearly hitting the wall.
"I said don't fucking move!" she yelled at the continuing commotion of whitecoats about their banks of hastily erected electronics, and around the gear beyond the transparent wall to the side, which appeared to be an operating theatre. They stopped their fiddling reluctantly ... one woman kept working and Vanessa shot her too in a convulsive burst of blue light and flailing limbs. "Are you morons hard of hearing?"
As her people grabbed those still standing and thrust them ungently against the walls, wickedly dark, fast armour amid helpless, stunned technicians, Vanessa strode into the theatre, weapon levelled at the several techs there ... and stopped in horror, seeing what appeared to be a dismembered corpse on the central table, skin peeled back, spine bristling with monitor needles. The theatre floor was a convulsive mass of cables and wires, and tubes to siphon blood.
"Oh Jesus." For several long seconds, she couldn't move, immobilised with shock.
"GI," said Hiraki, moving in behind her. Circled about the theatre, checking the various monitoring equipment through shaded helmet visor, ignoring the whitecoats who stood aside with forced, nervous calm ... not particularly surprised, Vanessa reckoned, in stunned disbelief.
And stared back at the grievous mess on the tabletop ... GI, of course it was a GI. That was synth-monitoring gear, even she recognised it, having seen something similar when she'd had her own enhancements done. A GI ... oh shit, so that was what this was about, the FIA were after a GI... good Gods, had there been a GI running loose in Tanusha? How the hell had that happened, and why hadn't the FIA told them like they were supposed to when dragging Federal business into Tanushan territory? And what the hell was all this gear? She directed a stare at the nearest whitecoat, hovering nearby.
"Is it alive?" The whitecoat shrugged. "What did you do to it?"
"LT," said Hiraki, examining a readout on one of the electronics banks, "looks like they're compiling a database ... I think it's just been transmitted into the net, could be anywhere. This copy just erased itself." He hooked a connector from his suit and plugged it with clumsy armoured fingers from helmet to insert socket. From outside the theatre came the sound of more protest at rough treatment.
"What," Vanessa asked the whitecoat icily, "are you pricks doing here?" Another shrug. "That's not good enough. You don't infiltrate Tanushan security and start a gunfight in public with a GI then just shrug at me when I ask you questions. I'm the law here, fucker. Where did this GI come from, and what are you doing with it?"
The whitecoat just looked at her, lips pressed to a thin, stubborn line.
"It's alive," Hiraki said, staring at another monitor, "I have brainwave function. They've got it hooked up with an infiltrator virus of some kind ... I'd guess it's been conscious for some of the time they were cutting."
Vanessa swore, and strode fast to Hiraki's console.
"That's this plug here ... it's still alive all right, but I don't know how long they can last without life support ..." She spun around on the whitecoat, who had not moved. "Someone come and get these fuckers out of here," she snarled, disconnecting her helmet lock in a hiss of escaping air and deactivating visor graphics.
The three whitecoats were pushed toward the door, where Sharma and Devakul, weapons steady, awaited them. Vanessa collared her helmet, shouldered her weapon, grasped the sensor plug in the back of the GI's head and removed it.
"Someone get me a chair!" she shouted, raw vocals to the empty air, and in the space beyond the transparent wall someone scurried to oblige ... Vanessa unwound her own connector from her armour webbing, wrinkling her nose as she realised that something smelt very bad here, a pungent, chemical stench that might have been biosystems-based disinfectant...
"LT," said Hiraki, voice muffled behind helmet breather, "what are you doing?"
"I'm going to dive," Vanessa told him, as Bjornssen arrived with a chair. She sat, finally getting the thigh pouch open to unfold a small headset, settled it tightly over her head, made the plug-ins and jacked herself in with a heavy, eye-blurring click ... so much for seamless interface, she thought sourly, unfolding the longer connector cord as members of her team gathered curiously about her.
"LT ..." Hiraki's voice was clearer, having removed his helmet, "... that's a GI there. I don't think you should dive without..."
"I can set for automatic disconnect if I'm branched," she replied, carefully feeling through the GI's soft, blonde hair for the socket insert ... found it, and inserted. Felt the familiar, humming buzz somewhere deep, loading and interface programs kicking in, establishing connections, powered by her suit's internal source.
"Vanessa," Kuntoro said warningly from across the operating table, helmet removed, hair flattened and sweaty, "you should wait just five minutes, we'll get an expert team ..."
"It'll be dead in five minutes," Vanessa retorted. The buzzing pulse grew stronger and she could see the construct now, unfolding before her eyes. She pulled the headset visor down ... rookie necessity, but Kuntoro was right, it wasn't strictly her specialty. Bright, glowing textures and shapes, nothing like the raw datalines of external VR ... conceptually compatible graphical-construct, CCG. "The Feds evidently won't talk, and if we lose this GI we'll never know what they wanted with her. This is too big to let go. Now shut up and let me concentrate."
An expert jacker would not have needed that last. She concentrated anyway, and with the visor down, the netscape unfolded more clearly before her eyes, uncluttered by genuine vision. The earplugs gave her sound, a gentle, thrumming pulse.
The GI was there. A large, intricate field ... spherical and glowing, but only dimly. Light pulsed within the interior, golden and deceptive past the deadened outer layers ... she moved closer and the spherical field grew enormously in her vision, revealing details. Barrier systems. Interface. Protected, interlocking detail ... good Gods, it was massive. She stared in bewilderment, unable to conceive how a single consciousness could maintain a field this large in cyberspace... all these systemically capable structures.
She reached — an awkward, mental reach with dubious control — a light, probing arm through the emptiness of that simulated space ... touched. Nothing. The barriers did not respond ... and they should have, being that massively powerful. There was no conscious response, no lighting of nearby structures ... just deadness. An intricate mass of outer functions, branches and junction nodes ... just dead. Like a ball of rolled-up steel fibres, complex but lifeless. How to proceed? She was baffled. And wondering, then, if she wouldn't have been smarter to listen to her team-mates and awaited the experts ... but caution was not her habit, and never had been.
She chose a pathway and entered. A long, complex passageway with a multitude of branches ... more than dead, they appeared scraped clean, of a bare and unnatural clarity, like bone parted from flesh. Some connections had been severed, and she could see the gaps where connections ought to be. Internal systems could not communicate. Suddenly, an audio channel clicked open ...
"
LT
?" Hiraki's voice, tinny and artificial. "
I've got a backup lock on you ... what do you see
?"
"
Unbelievable
," she replied breathlessly. "
The field's so far integrated it seems to go all the way into the main brain. Whatever infiltrator virus was hooked up on that cord, it's gone in a long way ... everything's dead here in the outer systems. I'm going to go in deeper to see if there's something alive in there
..."
"
Ricey I really don't think you should. GIs have neural interface so smooth they can even branch a regular human with basic augmentation. This isn't your average brain-hack we're talking about here
..."
"
If it dies, we'll never find out what the FIA were up to. This is huge, Hitoru, I can feel it
"
"
Which will do you no good if it kills you
."
"
Thank you for your concern, now get stuffed
."
She probed further, along maze-like systems of baffling complexity, only now coming to understand what it meant to say that GIs integrated to the networks far more efficiently than a mere augmented human. Human biological augmentation required translation between artificial and organic systems. GIs were entirely synthetic, and translation was only a matter of language, not of diametrically opposed systemologies. Every function of a GI's brain could interface with great independence, thus the complexity of the network field. She herself had to translate everything through a biotech modem, which filtered down the communication efficiency dramatically. But now, she thought as she probed even further into the dead, severed construct, it had proven a vulnerability. The infiltrator virus had hacked its way in, as all data-flows could go both ways. Greater access meant greater reverse vulnerability. And so ...
She stopped. Before her, a node was dimly pulsing. She remained a long way from the constructs centre, and the node seemed peripheral. But there it was, a dimly, glowing light, where all about was dead. She thought furiously. She had access to programs that could restore and assist these systems, if she could find a way to interface with the GI's still functioning systems, if it had any. She called up a selection panel in the bare, still air before her, and sorted through the varied icons ...
"
LT
," came Hiraki on audio, "
you found something
?"
"
Might have. I'm going to try to analyse, see if it's alive or not ... it's got a lot of life systems to keep functioning ... some of these nodes have to be functional. Hold on
."
She selected an icon ... cautiously. Thinking it was probably the right one, and wondering once more if Hiraki was right and she was being a fool... Her own implant was nowhere near as extensive as this, but there were enough ways into some of her own basic systems if the GI was powerful and clever enough, and she was leaving herself awfully wide open...
She activated the icon. Nothing. The node just pulsed, a chaotic, spider-like junction point of many twisting arms and connections, many severed, but still pulsing dumbly, with stupid, unthought reflex...
Abruptly her selection panel vanished and the node ceased pulsing in favour of bright, alarming energy. In the walls and passages about her, strands sprang to life, bright paths of gleaming colour streaking across the walls. About her, the simulated air appeared to crackle, a dense, prickling sensation like static electricity on a humid day.
"
LT
?" came Hiraki's voice. He sounded alarmed. "
LT, get out of there right now, I read a huge reactivation sequence right in your region
..." and abruptly cut, in a burst of frightening audio static. Vanessa tried her cutoff sequence ... it should have pulled her out, retracing her path at high velocity, but nothing happened. She backed up, forcing a flying retreat, but the air itself seemed thick as sludge, and prickling static leapt like bad pins-and-needles across her imagined, virtual skin ...
Something probed her audio sequence ... she could feel her heart hammering, back in some corner of her brain that continued to monitor such things, real fear at the power of this entity that now glowed in the air about her, and lit all space with brilliant curls and coils of light. Her last audio barrier fell, and it had her frequency with alarming ease ...
"...
who are you
...?" A small, quiet voice. Distant but not mechanical, not artificial as Hiraki's had been. Not simulated. A real, weak, pain-filled voice, as real as a warm, gentle whisper in her ear. "...
what are you doing here
...?"
"I'm Vanessa." Her own voice sounded somehow clearer, on this strange alien channel. Things seemed thick and clear, as if under water. "I'm with the CSA. I'm here to help you."
"...
help ... me
..." Which could have been a repetition, or a plea, she wasn't sure. "...
no... structure ...no support
..." A pause that might have been a sigh. Or a gasp, straining for strength. In the space about, the gleaming construct lines flickered and danced alarmingly. "...
too... much damage
..."
"I can help you," Vanessa said urgently. "Let me help you. Stop resisting, let me establish a linkup, you're too badly damaged to re-establish your own systems, we can feed you the programs externally that will rebuild your pathways ..."
"...
trick
..." said the voice. Small, weak ... and scared, Vanessa realised with shock. She could feel the emotion clearly, could smell it in the simulated air. The construct reverberated with thick, cloying fear and pain. For a moment it was almost overwhelming.
"It's no trick. I'm with the CSA. We've arrested the people who've done this to you. If you don't let me in, you're going to die anyway. Let me help you. I want you to live."
"...
why
...?" God, an honest question. An innocent, hurting question from someone with no reason at all to believe her ...
someone
, good Lord. She could feel the presence, could feel it probing weakly, trying to feel, trying to live ... Someone. This wasn't a machine. This was a person. It hit her with a force of revelation that almost left her speechless.
"Because," she said after a brief regathering, "we want to catch the people who ordered this done to you. And no one deserves this."
A moment's indecision. Fear. Reluctant, for reasons Vanessa could only too well understand, now that she'd seen, and heard, and felt. It thought she was going to finish it off. It did not want to be powerless. And it had no reason to believe that anyone would consider it worth saving.