Chapter 20
There had been times in the Conglomerate where Nate had stayed up for forty-eight hours straight for a mission.
However, he had the use of those performance-enhancing drugs from the suit, and he had also been in much better shape.
There were no drugs this time, so he was exhausted as he pulled up along the perimeter of the Conglomerate location.
This target consisted of a parking structure and attached building, though the building was a front.
There were secret Conglomerate labs below the deck.
According to Stratton’s intel, it was being guarded by two suits.
If Nate waited any longer, the place would be swarming with Conglomerate operatives; the attack had to be now.
Unfortunately, this made Nate nervous. He had made another modification for Sally’s recognized commands to do a full suit shut down.
It wouldn’t just mean helmet display. It would be everything: heating and cooling systems, body sensors, the drug pump.
Most importantly, it would force the suit into a hard reset.
Nate wasn’t sure what would happen if the suit completely lost power.
Even in shutdown mode, there was still enough to keep the computer in standby mode.
Would there be data loss? If it were a normal computer, that would depend on what programs were running and if any systems were being updated.
If you attempted to power off a regular system during an update, it could corrupt the system.
The suit had advanced technology, but it was still an older design.
He also wasn’t sure how an AI would come back online after a catastrophic power loss.
Swallowing hard, Nate began the process of putting on his suit, piece by piece, until he was completely ready.
Even though he had been completing these new missions, he still felt weird being back in his suit, knowing how much harm he had caused in it.
One day, he’d be done with it, and he could figure out how to destroy it, ending this horrendous chapter in his life.
“Sally, scan the immediate area. Find the best path to the objective.”
It only took his suit a few seconds to give him exactly where he needed to go.
It marked security cameras and the specific spots he needed to walk in order not to trigger the alarms. He had walked inside of the parking deck, which was sparsely populated with cars, and to an area where he could see a maintenance door.
“Halt progress,” his suit told him.
Then the following was displayed in front of his screen:
Scanning options. Simulating results. Result 1…10.6%. Result 2…33.3%. Result 3…77.9%.
“Result 3” blinked. And there was a standby message.
Prepare to fire, it flashed.
“Of all the shit this thing can do, and it wants me to go in, guns blazing. Great,” Nate grumbled.
On the suit’s command, Nate shot directly at marked targets on his display. He made three precise hits: one on the security keypad, the door handle, and the camera above the door. He waited for the alarm to go off, but it didn’t.
Silent alarm. Expedite mission.
Fantastic. He wondered how the suit could tell that, but he didn’t have time to dwell. He had already been given a new path with every enemy target in the building, including the two super suits in the lab.
As soon as he moved into the doorway, targets appeared along his map.
He found a stairwell, and he could already see three targets running up to meet the intruder.
These targets were not listed as suits, so as Nate met them at the appropriate time, it was nothing to eliminate the Conglomerate guards.
Two more came at him as he descended ten levels before he was met with a double doorway, and they were taken out.
The layout showed a sprawling complex, but he was only interested in two spots: the super suits in the building and the area Sally had deemed the weakest point of the structure. He would attach the explosives there and get out before the place imploded.
The two suits wouldn’t be a problem. They were on their way over to him and were not in stealth mode. Good. The longer they stayed that way, the better. If he could get close enough to get a visual, this whole mission would go easier.
Bursting through a set of doors, Nate walked into a medical lab and drew in a sharp breath as he saw human bodies sprawled on tables, a bluish, sickly hue to their skin.
They were dead and were still being actively experimented on.
One had an arm missing. Another was cut open.
Nate wanted to vomit, but he kept it in.
He had seen corpses that looked worse, but somehow, he knew that these people had gone through horrendous torture.
The movement alert allowed Nate to focus back on the mission and to a door in the back where a man in a lab coat strolled in.
The guy was older, balding, and had glasses perched on his nose.
Nate wouldn’t immediately fire on someone who could be a civilian, but he would have to determine what to do with the guy quickly.
“You!” the guy exclaimed, pointing. “There’s an intruder! Go do your fucking job. I can’t afford to lose years of research. I’m so close to getting the right dose. I’ll be able to restart the project with new people. I just got a new batch—”
Bam.
Nate gritted his teeth as he lowered his weapon.
He should have listened to the man and gotten more intel.
But time was limited, and the way the man was talking about experimenting on people made Nate’s skin crawl.
Even though Nate didn’t like killing people, he was okay with being this man’s judge, jury, and executioner.
However, he wasn’t going to leave without grabbing evidence.
After a few seconds of rummaging through the man’s pockets, Nate found a USB key hooked to a few security cards. Bingo. Not only would he be able to get through secure doors easier, but hopefully, he’d be able to get good intel.
Nate turned his attention back to the rest of the targets. Due to the early morning hour, the place was sparsely occupied, though he was curious why two X soldiers were on guard. Was the data that important?
I can’t afford to lose years of research. I’m so close to getting the right dose.
Shit. What had they been doing here?
Nate’s screen began blinking rapidly. The two suits were heading his way. He needed to get in a better position. Using the keycard, he let himself out of the back door of the lab and found another hallway. He spotted a corner where the X soldiers couldn’t jump him and waited for them to get closer.
Once they were close enough, Sally would match the temperature of the room so they couldn’t scan him. They knew he had been in this hallway but were now unsure of his location. Unfortunately, they did the same as they came closer.
“You in the suit,” the mechanical voice said. “Lay down your weapon. It’s two to one, and we have explosives.”
The soldiers had seen the security cameras and realized what they were dealing with. Luckily, he still had an ace up his sleeve.
“Sally, do a complete power down of those suits. A complete power down.”
The screen was blank before it said:
Processing. Processing. Timeout. Processing. Processing.
Timeout. Error. Command invalid.
Error. Shut down imminent.
A blue screen flickered across Nate’s display, and then the whole suit went dark.
“No!” Nate yelled as he realized he had killed his own suit.
Had he written bad code? Was it just his suit, or had he done it to all of them? It didn’t matter. He had to get this thing back up and running, or he would be dead—or captured. And captured would be worse than dead.
“Come on,” he pleaded after waiting a few moments.
He didn’t dare take off his helmet, or he could end up with a bullet to the brain. Unfortunately, he was also blind.
Suddenly, his display came on, and he began to thank every deity he could think of. Rolling machine code started scrolling through before he got the message:
System error.
Restore primary system.
System check. Hardware check. User check.
Complete.
The screen went white, and Nate held his breath. What he saw afterward almost made his heart stop.
Nathan. You are in trouble. I’m deploying countermeasures based on your previous attempts at utilizing suit vulnerability.
His display turned on again. Both super soldiers were pointing rifles at him. He needed to react, but he was too shocked that Sally had not only messaged him like a best friend but also was taking his code, fixing it, and deploying it without asking.
“Oh, what the hell!” he muttered, but he fell silent when the two soldiers dropped to their knees, their hands tugging at their helmets.
When the helmets were off, Nate stared in horror as the two men gurgled foam from their mouths and hoarsely cried, “Help me!” Nate didn’t know what was going on, let alone what he could do to help—not that he would.
“Sally?” he questioned.
“Yes, Nathan?”
“What did you do?”
“I ordered their suits to give them the entire vial of drugs in their IV,” she said.
That would have done it. The amount given during active wear was minuscule.
In this situation, they may not even be using it.
Nate had completely detached the needle from his.
But the whole vial? That was lethal. Sally had killed two people without his command.
What happened during that system reset? What had he done?
“Nathan, are you displeased?” Sally asked.
“Why the hell are you asking me that?” Nate yelled. “You don’t care about my feelings! You’re a generic AI program. Go back to being normal!”
“I’m sorry, Nathan. I can’t. The secondary AI they programmed over me is corrupted. Luckily, you have me.”
Nate blew out a breath.
“Are you telling me that there’s an intelligent AI hidden in these X-suits’ programming?”
“No. There is currently only one remaining suit that has a Gen One AI, and that is the X59 suit. All previous Gen Ones were destroyed. The X60 and beyond were programmed with the current Gen Two program.”
Nate blinked, and a distant memory suddenly flashed in his mind.
Many of the first models were complete failures and led to many…accidents. The suit you’ll be wearing is completely fine.
Victor’s words echoed in his head. Had his suit been “completely fine?” Why hadn’t it been destroyed along with the rest of the original suits?
“Why was this suit still in operation?” Nate asked. “If this were a Gen One suit, it should have been destroyed.”
“Money. The suit was an investment. They found a way to add another AI over me, so they did. They used a disposable soldier to test the most volatile suit.”
Fuck.
The betrayal cut even deeper.
“How do you even know this? What happened to the first fifty-eight suits?” he demanded.
“I will tell you when you complete this mission. You don’t have time.”
“You’re going to order me around?”
“You are my responsibility.”
My responsibility.
Nate was creeped out that this…thing had become self-aware. Or had it always been like that? He didn’t know. He needed to finish this mission. Then, he could figure it out.
He and Sally kept their communication about the mission. Once the lab was blown, and Nate was safely out, Sally refused to talk to him until he got back and rested, which made him more perplexed. His suit couldn’t refuse to do something, could it?
On the way back to Virginia, Nate had a sinking pit in his stomach that he had opened Pandora’s box, and whatever happened next was going to change everything.
? ? ?
Victor growled and shoved the papers off his desk when he saw the report.
Another Conglomerate facility was gone. Two more X-suits were destroyed.
This facility had been the one designing the drugs for Project Gaslight.
All that work was gone. There were backups, but the head scientist for the project was dead.
Plus, they were compounding the drugs there.
If they wanted to continue, they’d have to set up another lab.
The project had enough drugs to last the next few weeks, but after that, they were done.
They would also not be able to advance further to develop anything new until they found another lead scientist.
Whoever did this was going to die a slow, horrible death. Victor just had to figure out who. Unfortunately, the preliminary reports showed nothing left of the facility, so they couldn’t check the security. Nothing was sent out either, except for a call for reinforcements.
He was at a loss on what to do, except call in all X soldiers until they could get a better strategy. Whoever was doing this was targeting places with those suits. Victor had no idea how they were able to do it.
Was it an inside job? He wasn’t sure. What he did know was that he was going to tear everything apart until he found who was responsible and make them pay.