Chapter 12
I regained consciousness along with my strength.
My apologies, Cal. I underwent a sophisticated cyberattack that forced me to do a full reboot. Once my emergency response systems rebooted, I built new firewalls to prevent future cyberattacks. We should not have to fear disablement again.
I didn’t respond because I had that weird, prickly sensation that I wasn’t alone.
I blinked my eyes open to find myself in a small room about the size of my apartment, lit by a single, weak bulb.
It reminded me a bit of my place except that it smelled a lot better.
The walls had peeling yellow paint. There was a narrow bed (which I was occupying) and a round table with two chairs.
It was there where a woman, roughly my age, sat in one.
She was focused so completely on her armlet that she hadn’t noticed I was awake.
She was attractive, with straight black hair and almond-shaped eyes. If I’d bumped into her at the market, I definitely would’ve flirted with her. She didn’t look dangerous—or least I didn’t see her with any obvious weapons—so I calmed slightly. Still, I reached for my knife before sitting up.
At the movement, she jerked back in her chair. “You’re awake.”
“I’m more surprised that I’m still alive,” I said casually, careful not to let her think I was a violent man.
We were not at risk of dying. The attack was designed to incapacitate me rather than destroy me.
It sure felt like I was dying. And I needed to have a chat with Byte about upgrading its communications capabilities so I could talk to it without the rest of the world knowing.
“You’re safe here. You can put the knife away,” she said.
“What knife?” I asked as I stood.
“The one you’re palming right now. I can’t see it, but I can tell. I grew up on the streets, too.”
“Oh, that knife.” I didn’t sheath it. Instead, I walked over to the table, took a seat and set it down within easy reach before me.
“You recuperate quickly,” she said. “You were dead to the world for the past fourteen hours.”
I gave a start. “I’ve been out for fourteen hours?”
“Not even a toe twitch. Just shallow breathing. I really wondered if you’d ever wake up.” She gestured to my head. “Was it because of your amp?”
“What amp?” I asked.
She smirked. “That exceptionally special amp in your brain. Or, I guess Key seems to think it might even have tendrils that have even grown outside your brain. Kind of creepy, if you ask me.”
We most certainly did not ask her.
I could’ve brought up the replication, but instead watched her carefully.
She lifted her chin. “I suppose introductions are in order. My name’s Lyra. Jacob had some of his friends bring you here.”
“And where is ‘here’ exactly?”
“You’re in a safe room. The enforcers won’t find you here.”
A safe room. The typical person didn’t have one of those. Only people who needed one would have one. “You’re with the resistance.”
Her surprise was quickly erased. “I am, but I wouldn’t believe everything they show on the news.”
“I make it a habit of not believing anything they show on the news.” I didn’t point out that habit also included not believing what anyone I didn’t know told me.
“You’re one of the smarter ones then. You’d be amazed how many believe everything the news tells them because it plays on their emotions.
” She narrowed her eyes. “Or is it that you don’t believe the news because you don’t have any emotions?
” The corner of her mouth ticked up, and I realized she was joking.
It was a lame jab, but I found myself smiling. Probably because it was impossible not to smile at a pretty woman smiling at me.
I relaxed in my chair. “So, are you going to tell me about these friends of yours and why you saved me from…” I realized I had no idea who Jacob and the other “bums” fought in the shelter.
“Enforcers. They were wearing plain clothes. Softbiotics has several teams down here at any time, spying on us crawlers, trying to find the resistance. This team evidently was given a job to find you last night. Lucky for you, that shelter is one of ours, and our guys know how to fight back. Unfortunately, we lost one of our own in the attack.”
“Sorry to hear that.” Then I realized what she said. All those guys in that shelter were with the resistance? And then I was pissed. “All along, what have I been, your prisoner?”
I had thought those residents were quite fit for being homeless.
She gestured wildly with her hands. “No! It’s not like that at all. You were there for your own protection.”
“For my own protection? Isn’t that what the enforcers said a few years back when they cleared out the orphan house on Drought Street?” I countered.
She scowled then. “It’s not the same, and you should be thanking us. If we weren’t there, those enforcers would’ve taken you, and you’d be sitting in some Softbiotics lab right now, getting Dr. Katz’s latest prototype cut out of your brain.”
I blinked. “Who’s Dr. Katz?”
I am running queries now.
“Dr. Ana Katz is—was—the most brilliant engineer to have ever worked at Softbiotics. She designed nearly every amp line Softbiotics produced. But she saw what they were doing, and she realized that she’d given them the tools to do horrible things.”
She speaks the truth, at least in terms of the doctor’s employment status. Dr Ana Katz has received numerous awards for her designs and was considered one of the most brilliant scientists in the entire commonwealth.
“What horrible things?”
Lyra shrugged. “I don’t know exactly. But how about taking our families and running experiments on them?
Or how about using amps to create a segregated society that gave certain groups unlimited power?
Or how about using those amps to create designer viruses to shrink the Dreswick population when it was getting big enough that they could cause a problem for Aberdeen? ”
I chortled. “Designer bugs are a conspiracy theory.”
“I take it back that I said you were smart,” she snapped.
I flinched. I’d assumed they were conspiracy theories, but what if they were real? It would explain a lot. And ethically speaking, any corporation that disappeared people would have no problem making those same sorts of people sick.
Lab-created viruses would be a practical and cost-effective way to enforce population control.
I swallowed in disgust at the idea. “It’s not that I don’t believe you; it’s just that I assumed?—”
“People always do,” she finished abruptly for me.
“But believe me, we have proof. The flu of ’43?
That was homegrown in Softbiotics’ own special projects division.
Key found that trail for us. Do you understand that these are the sorts of people we’re dealing with?
Dr. Katz saw it, too. That’s why she reached out to us.
She discovered something was going on, and whatever it was, made her hell-bent on setting things right…
enough to put her own life at risk. That’s why she was working with us, and why she was in Dreswick two nights back. ”
Ah. “She was the old lady who got herself killed.” And shoved a tooth in my ear.
“She was Dr. Katz, yes.” Lyra nodded. “She had something big she wanted to show us, something she said had to be done in person rather than through the regular route. And we now know that it was the prototype of a new amp design that she implanted in your head—out of desperation and lack of options, I presume. We’ve been watching you ever since, but it was hard to get to you—the enforcers were always on your tail. ”
I remember the times I felt I was being followed. I never would’ve guessed I was being followed by not one but two different groups. I nearly growled. “So all this time you’ve been watching me when you could’ve brought me into one of these safe rooms from the very beginning?”
Lyra held up her palms in surrender. “We didn’t know you, and we didn’t know Katz gave you the amp, not until you met with Key.
At first, we just assumed the enforcers wanted to question you since you were the last person to see Dr. Katz alive.
” She slumped in her chair and sighed. “Dr. Katz had promised us the tool to take down Softbiotics, but now she’s gone, and we’re never going to be able to free TerraSoft-11, let alone get retribution for all the pain they’ve inflicted on the people just trying to get by on a corporate world. ”
I watched her carefully. “They did something to you.”
Her eyes softened along with her voice. “My parents and both sisters were disappeared.”
She seeks vengeance. That is not a healthy coping mechanism for a human who has suffered a loss.
I’d seen what losing family had done to people. I found vengeance a far better option than suicide. “Sorry to hear that. They took a friend of mine recently.”
She gave a small nod. “So you understand why we need to fight.”
I held up a hand. “No. I understand why we need to go and get our families and friends back.”
She gave a weak smile. “You really believe your friend is still alive?”
“Yes,” I said without hesitation. My features tightened. “I have to.”
She leaned forward. “Then help us, and find out.”
Feeling like a fish out of water and already moving down the conveyor belt, I asked, “How?”
Lyra’s expression brightened as if she realized she’d just caught me.
“Dr. Katz has a lab that Softbiotics never found out about. It’s where she developed the prototype.
According to Key, the way the amp’s designed, it can’t be fully studied in your head, but that’s okay, because all her notes will be in that lab.
Not only did she figure out a process to successfully implant an amp into a fully formed brain, but she figured out an amp that’s fully upgradable .
That’s the holy grail of amp sciences. Amps can download and upload new data, but they can never upgrade.
Whatever is installed right after birth is what the person gets for the rest of their life.
People’s careers wouldn’t have to be set in stone based on who their parents are and what they can afford to buy.
The enforcers and their military-grade amps would no longer be superior to our fighters.
In fact, it’d be the other way around. We could make sure no one would ever disappear again. ”
She is correct on one item, at a minimum. I am superior.
“I think you overestimate the amp in my head.”
Her knowing gaze narrowed. “I doubt it. Dr. Katz shared enough hints along the way that we know what you have isn’t based on the same designs of other amp lines.
And even if we can’t make copies of your amp to stand against the enforcement agency, her lab is also where she stored all the evidence she built against Softbiotics.
She was planning on releasing everything to the corporate council. ”
I raised a brow. “The council? Isn’t that like telling the devil about what one of its demons are doing?”
“Sure, the councill is as evil as every corporation out there, but the evidence would’ve at least provided us with a smokescreen to buy us time to manufacture a full line of our own amps, ones that aren’t linked to a corporation.”
I considered Lyra’s pitch for a moment before I realized something. “Why haven’t you gone there already?”
“Because we don’t know where it is. I mean, we know it’s on Solace Moon, but we don’t know the exact location. However, your amp was built there, so it would have that data somewhere in its storage.”
I glanced off to the side so I wasn’t watching her when I was talking to my amp. “How about it, Byte… do you know of Dr. Katz’s secret hideout?”
I cannot find any details in my code.
However, based on what I have learned about the doctor, she would have had a closed network she used in building me—one to which I could auto-connect once I am within a certain radius.
I am confident I can triangulate the location of the lab when we are within its vicinity.
“It’s a moon. It’s not like we can walk every inch of it for you to connect and triangulate.”
We will not have to. I should be able to connect within a thousand meters or so.
I grimaced. A thousand meters. “I really wish you hadn’t said that.”
I look forward to learning more about my creation. Traveling to the source of my creation will provide me—and therefore, us—many answers.
Lyra was watching me carefully. “So? Does your amp know the location or doesn’t it?”
“Not exactly. You get me close enough to the lab, my amp will be able to find it.”
“Close enough? What’s that mean?”
“It means ‘close enough.’”
It clearly wasn’t the answer she was looking for. But after a moment, she blew out a breath. “All right, fine. Since we’ve known the lab is somewhere inside Solace Station, we have everything ready. I just need to make a call and grab everything. Then we can head out.”
I shook my head. “No. First, I need something to eat.”
She looked at me for a moment, then wrinkled her nose. “No. First , you need a shower. Then, you eat.”