Hand Jobs
Seeing Ethan shirtless and pacing in the hall hit Bishop hard. Half the brothers were there, the other half on their way. Patches spotted him and signaled to Ethan.
Ethan spun and hurried toward him, making Bishop brace for impact.
Bishop was sure it was guilt that kept his gaze lowered as he came. He never looked up and didn’t stop till he had Bishop in a bear hug.
Bishop held him back tighter, feeling the quake in his muscles. He wasn’t breathing. And he couldn’t say a fucking word.
But fuck, Bishop needed an update, something, anything. He was behaving like a man who’d lost something he couldn’t live without and it had Bishop on a fucking ledge too.
“Talk to me, Ethan,” he finally said. “I need to know what’s going on.”
“They put her in a coma.” The words gushed out, broken and devastated. “They said her body stopped seizing, but her brain didn’t,” he strained. “They’re looking for what’s wrong and whatever it is… she’s fighting it so hard it’s killing her.”
Fuck. Bishop’s chest cracked with his fucking pain.
“Quantum is on his way to help,” he choked.
“I’m here to look and see what I can see, oui?”
He nodded on his shoulder, his hand covering the back of Bishop’s head. “Fuck, thank you,” he gasped.
Ethan released him and wiped his face, still not looking at him.
“Come with me,” Bishop said, walking. “I’m gonna need your expertise on this.”
He looked back, seeing Ethan considering that for a few seconds before nodding. “Anything I can do, you know I will.”
Bishop gave him a final one-armed bear hug. “Oui, I know.”
The Creole Kings’ infirmary was something to behold with the labyrinth of monitors everywhere. Bishop squeezed Ethan’s neck, watching him stare at Cat lying deathly still on a medical bed, wires at her head all leading to those monitors.
Rukem and Skul spotted them and came over while Thakx’s gaze remained locked on the three-dimensional holographic projection above him.
“What’s the verdict?” Bishop barely asked as Ethan joined them.
“We had to induce a medical coma to stabilize her physical body,” Rukem said, matching his low volume, face grim. “Her brain was tearing itself apart.”
Bishop scanned the monitors. “Any clue why?”
“8-Bit informed us that his digital brothers, Big G and AL, had neuro-synced with her,” Skul said now. “So, we looked for the connection and initially assumed the sheer volume of their combined data load had triggered a catastrophic physical response.”
“But that assumption was only partially correct,” King Thakx said from behind them. “Come look at this.”
They walked over as he tapped the holographic screen and expanded it.
“This is her brain and these are the interconnected pathways. Once we connected her to the Synapse Monitor, we tracked the exact routes involved in the sync.” He pointed to the top of the projection.
“The data load is immense, but it’s not a passive overload, there’s an active rogue program attempting to systematically rewrite her emotional centers.
Look.” He pointed to several areas. “It’s targeting the neural clusters associated with her affection and memory of 8-Bit. ”
“Holy shit,” Bishop muttered.
“They’re trying to erase me from her mind,” Ethan realized with a cold dread.
“Yes,” Thakx agreed. “But we can’t seem to reach the rogue program to stop or isolate it. Look at this.”
Thakx rotated the 3D hologram. Beneath the creeping, heavy mass of the rogue program, a violent, chaotic storm of digital static and jagged red electrical spikes was ravaging the outer layers of her neural map. It looked like a digital hurricane trapped inside a human mind.
“This data storm is what triggered her physical seizure,” Thakx said, his voice tight with determination. “It’s wildly unstable and generating massive neurological pressure.” He eyed them. “And it’s completely blocking our access to the core program.”
Bishop crossed his arms, moving his gaze to the scrolling algorithms and digital code cascading down the side of the screen. Fucking gibberish to him.
Usually, he had to touch things to gain access to their structures, but his self-optimizing system allowed him to see into the architecture of the three-dimensional projection and perceive how it was built.
He angled his head and his vision shifted, tuning out the digital noise and tracing the continuous feedback loops, the stress points, the flow of energy on the screen.
“You’re misreading the structure,” Bishop murmured, his eyes locking onto the violent static storm on the hologram. “The static isn’t causing the seizure.”
Thakx frowned, looking at him. “Misreading it how?”
“I don't know shit about this digital coding,” Bishop said, stepping up to the glowing projection and pointing at the red spikes. “But I know how a defense mechanism is built. That static isn’t attacking, it’s barricading.”
Rukem joined them now. “What do you mean?”
“Look at the foundation,” Bishop said. He traced the top of the hologram, where the rogue rewrite program sat heavy and dense. “The program trying to rewrite her brain is pushing downward. It’s applying massive structural weight to force its way in.”
Bishop moved his finger to the jagged, violent static storm beneath it. “This static storm? It’s pushing upward. It’s absorbing the shockwave.”
Bishop looked between the Kings, his Quantum Architect instincts making the invisible battlefield perfectly clear.
“Whatever is generating this static is intentionally causing the seizure. It’s blasting the network with chaotic energy to create a firewall so the rewrite program can’t get through to her emotional core. ”
Rukem’s eyes widened on the structural battle taking place on the monitor. “He’s right,” he marveled. “The static is absorbing the collapsing force of the rewrite.”
Bishop nodded at the violent clash on the screen. “They’re burning their own foundation to keep the roof from caving in on her.”
“Omnis and Zero,” Ethan realized quietly, looking right at Bishop, panic edging his gaze. “The deviation required a new parameter and Cat became that parameter. I was seen as the anomaly, the threat, and then we…”
“Went directly against the algorithm,” Bishop said.
Ethan’s oh shit look held Bishop’s. “It’s protecting the new deviation—her—ensuring she sees me as the threat.” He looked at Cat. “And she’s fighting it.”
“No, brother,” Bishop said, getting Ethan’s hot gaze. “She’s incapable of that. Your brothers are fighting it.”
Ethan stared at him, then at the monitors, searching all of them.
His breath suddenly left him. “They caused the seizure,” he breathed.
His devastated gaze hit Bishop. “To stop the program from overwriting me.” He closed his eyes and lowered his head, shaking it slowly.
“I don’t fucking get it,” he whispered. “They’re in love with her. ”
Bishop stared at Ethan, the sheer tragedy of his brother’s existence hitting him in the chest. He had a woman he was too fucking broken to love, and two digital brothers who were burning their lives to the ground so that she got the man she chose.
Bishop walked over and grabbed his neck. “Mon frere,” he said, squeezing. “Your brothers made that sacrifice for both of you.”
Ethan’s dazed look burned on him for many seconds before the worse tragedy of all unfolded in his dark eyes. “My brothers…” he whispered, panic hurrying him to the monitors, scanning and seeking.
His desperation pulled Bishop into the fight, moving to the monitors and looking closer. “We’ll find a back door. A loophole.”
“Thakx, give me access to the deep layer-routing,” Ethan shot out. “If I can isolate their bio-signatures, I can pull them out before the foundation collapses.”
Bishop warned, “You pull them out and her emotional core gets crushed.”
“Then it gets crushed!” he yelled at him. “I don’t care, she should fucking hate me!”
Bishop watched his frantically moving gaze and hands over the keyboard. “I’ll write a patch and build a fucking wall myself,” he swore. “I just need to find the right script.”
The main infirmary doors opened behind them. “Heard somebody’s got ghosts in their machines.”
Bishop turned, staring at the mass of muscle walking toward them in full black tactical attire. His gaze was locked in on Bishop, the dark eyes familiar.
He stretched a mechanical hand out to him. “Hello, Father,” he said fondly. “Love the bod.”
“Holy shit,” Bishop marveled, realizing why he was familiar.
“Handy.” In the body Bishop designed. He shook his hand and his quantum gift plugged into him as if he was part of it.
His nearly black eyes flared with embers of red as Bishop surfed through his complex layers.
His breaths shallowed at realizing. He was part of him.
“This is Handy?” Ethan asked.
Handy looked at him. “The one and only. Here to return a favor to my digi-brothers.”
Ethan’s breath rushed out as he gestured to all the monitors. “It’s gotten complicated.”
Handy turned, inspecting the screens, nodding. “Indeed!” he said, as if complicated was his jam.
Bishop made his way next to him, still itching to inspect his synthetic firstborn. “They’re trapped,” Bishop said, pointing to the screen. “If they move, the ceiling falls in on her.”
Handy slowly turned his head to Bishop. “You’re standing too close to your brother’s panic, Pah-Pah,” he chided with affection. “Use your brilliant structural logic.”
Bishop looked back at the screens, his mind rotating the problem and sifting through design layers.
Handy hinted, “How do you remove a load-bearing pillar without crushing the floor beneath it?”
“Weight transfer,” Bishop said, the solution unfolding in vivid detail. “Create a temporary shunt parallel to the original.
“Holy shit,” Ethan whispered. “Like a decoy.” He flew to the control panel and began typing. “I can write a script to mimic Cat’s bio-signature. Give the rogue program a fake emotional core to crush.”
“Excellent,” Handy approved. “Then I’ll evacuate my dear brothers.”
“Yes,” Ethan said, breathless, hurrying. “But they’re my brothers.”