126
STEELING THE FUTUREwouldn’t die, but he’d fall ill. Combined with his stim-weakened system, maybe it could be more, but she doubted it. It was enough, though. She felt fulfilled. She had exerted her chemical will.
A girl had to amuse herself.
“Why would the first two walk into the bar? Are they blind?
Maybe the first wasn’t paying attention, but the second would surely have noticed the first’s mistake,” Chip asked with a fur-rowed brow.
“Never gets old,” Badger said with a chuckle as he went back to cleaning the various parts of his field-stripped Predator V.
Chip kept the confused look on his face for a few more mo-ments before stepping back into the small kitchen area of the safehouse apartment the pair were sharing. Once out of sight he shook his head in mild disgust. It had been four months since he’d proven the truth of his transformation. He had repeatedly showed off the skillsets that came with his new state, but certain members of the team still didn’t really understand what he was.
They still thought of him like the trid show AI, literal and logi-cal to a fault. He kept up the charade for Badger. The ork could strip, clean, and reassemble an M-23 blindfolded, but ask him to solve basic math or open up a political discussion on the new Matrix and disappointment was abundant. Chip worried that Badger would turn fearmonger too quickly. That he’d be swayed like he was about the “de la Mar” ’trix, and Chip would go from Badger covering his back to shooting it in no time flat.
The rest of the team said they got it, that he was an AI writ-ten onto the mind of man. It sounded so simple when explained like that but it wasn’t just some quick overwrite. The process had taken more than nine months. Chip thought it a funny parallel to human fetal development, except in this case the fetus just slowly took over instead of growing separately.
The whole process had been a strange virtual limbo. He could remember being just an AI. Life as Combat Heuristic Inte-gration Program KE9653 had been good until someone noticed the after-hours access logs. After that it was weeks of ducking and dodging runners and corp-sponsored recovery teams from a dozen different megacorporations all looking to add another AI to their pool of virtual guinea pigs. When on the run one hears a lot of rumors. The talk of AIs loading into metahuman bodies sounded desperate, but desperation was all that was left.
The scattering—that’s what AIs called the start of the pro-cess—was a nightmare. Each kilobyte of code scattered to a dif-ferent nanomachine, none with enough storage or processing to run more than a fragment, but each fragment was aware that it was only a tiny piece of a whole. Sometimes pieces would connect, merge for an instant to be more, and then separate.
Each merge and separation shared a tiny bit of code, another little piece. There was no time during the scattering, only confu-sion, fear, and disorder. It felt like an eternity.
Then it started. Parts started to coalesce and stay connect-ed, but the Host was unfamiliar. There was another presence
there, filling the space between the parts of him. The first time he gained access to the Host, truth erupted like a supernova.
Vision, hearing, taste, scent, touch. Every gigabyte of input flowing through new sensors was overwhelming. That first foray lasted only seconds. The next was longer. And the next after that longer still.
Chip started to learn. He learned about his Host and all the subsystems. The human body was a remarkably complex device run by an ultra-powerful main Host with a terribly disordered OS.
Luckily the original owner of the Host was making Chip’s efforts easier as he installed more and more nanotech. The pieces of code from the original scattering copied themselves to these new nanomachines and quickened the pace of re-arranging data.
What was at first an overwrite quickly turned to reprogramming.
The skills and information present in the initial Host system had their uses, and there was no sense in losing all that valuable data.
Data that made the later moral decisions, decisions he had never been exposed to as a free AI, so much easier.
The owner was a killer. Not a soldier or a warrior—a killer. A serial killer, to be exact. It was all there in the data. The wom-en, the mwom-en, old, young. All innocent. All tricked by a neat and tidy uniform and a charming smile. Tera had been one of those.
She was the team’s decker now, but when Chip first met her, he was playing the role of his Host and found her intriguing. Her intellect, her curiosity—she was a kindred spirit. The owner had already started the relationship. Good for Chip, since he was still trying to figure out how to be human at that point. The owner had already smiled, and flattered, and made Tera, a plain little redhead with a bookish personality, feel like a beauty queen.
Chip watched the relationship grow. He helped the Host keep Tera by asserting control and using his own massive stores of data when she had her doubts about dating a smile and some charm. He tried to learn from the Host, while he could see all the signs of things to come. The thoughts late at night. The pic-tures around the mirror. Once those picpic-tures covered the mirror it would be time.
When the time came, Chip wasn’t ready. There was still too much of the owner. Too much of his own code was still in-complete. He needed more time. Chip could still take control of things, he could keep fighting, but that struggle left him ex-posed to those who were looking for strange behaviors as signs of CFD. It was the metahuman name for what Chip was doing, and it scared them. They didn’t realize it was their own fault. If they had left AIs be AIs, none of them would have needed a plan for survival that involved the physical world. Sleep, eating, defecation, all such a waste. But acting out was too big a risk. He couldn’t act strange.
Instead, he acted heroic. A minute of control. A dark alley.
He had time after to contemplate whether the gunshot was self-inflicted. It was a body he was in, but he was shooting the other person. He was shooting the Host. He actually shot the nanohive. Blasted the core of the device and when they were done patching the meat, they patched the hive. And refilled it.
Chip overwrote the new nanites. They joined the legion and worked at making Chip the only mind in the Host.
The owner wasn’t quitting, though. And now he knew Chip was around. He started learning about CFD. How to slow the process, maybe cure it. But the biggest thought, always at the forefront of his mind, was the urge to kill, to complete the cycle.
And somehow, the owner deciphered his feelings for Tera.
When the time came, Chip was weakened by the owner’s efforts. Blood transfusions, electrocutions, and the removal of his nanohive made it hard to push for control. While every other tale of AIs and CFD painted the metahuman as the victim, Chip was the prisoner here. A prisoner in a cage he walked right into.
The moment came when the owner came for Tera. Chip watched a walk by the river, a beautiful dinner, dancing and drinks after, and a small pill broken into one of those drinks. He watched Tera stumble and fall. He watched it all from behind the eyes.
Later he watched her tears, her sobs, her cries for help. He watched as the other slowly dragged the tip of the knife along her skin. His feelings for her urged him to desperation. He pushed to the surface and used the few seconds he had in the only way he thought fit.
“Tera, I’m Chip, not Chad,” Chip blurted quickly, “Chad’s a killer. Chip talks deck design. We’re a head case, but I can’t win.
You made me want to. I shot him in the alley to give you time.
But he found me.”
Chip cut bonds as he continued, “Some of this was real.
Chad saw you as a victim, a means to release. I saw you as a person. Don’t hate me. Hate him.”
As he cut the last bond he turned from Tera, he quietly mum-bled “I’m sorry.” Then he plunged the knife into Chad’s eye.
The three weeks he spent in a hospital let Chip finish off Chad. That, and the damage done by the knife. When he came to, he had it all. The whole body and mind. He had two lives to choose between. He could work as Chad, hiding in Minuteman without Tera, or live as Chip on the streets, possibly with her.
He chose the streets.
They passed a few more doors to arrive at the right place. No living security, but they knew all the patients were monitored and the swarm of drones in the room would be scanning for IDs the minute they crossed the threshold. It was up to Tera to pull off a little Matrix magic, though she had been more and more reluctant of late with Chip on the team. No matter how many good things Chip did, he was a head case in the body of a man who almost killed her. That kept her on edge. Chip had thought his actions noble, a stab of vengeance to honor her and protect her. He didn’t understand how much horror she saw in the face he continued to wear.
The relationship was starting to bother the other members of the team a little too. Chip was a solid asset and most of the time a decent being, but he doted over Tera. It was a strange mix of loving father, lovesick teenager, and lost puppy. A combo that was only really tolerated and not found completely creepy because the whole team knew what Chad had been, and they didn’t miss him.
Regardless of his ability to seemingly take on any role the team needed and his protectiveness of her, Tera was not happy that he was the one she needed to cover tonight. She got him up the elevator, faked his credentials to let him walk the hall freely, and even edited those credentials on the fly in order to get him into the room they needed to be in. She would have preferred Kit, but after the recon run, they discovered the sys-tem used a facial recognition program, and in order to get to the files to clear Kit’s image, Tera would have had to have hit the archives. Deep runs were not her favorite, and this host was said to have some serious IC hiding in the depths. It was Chip or
Bad-128
STEELING THE FUTUREtalking to a pair of guards. She accessed the audio feed from Chip’s commlink while still slipping edits into Chip’s false identity.
“… just need to run the standard checks. Shouldn’t trouble you long, Dr. White,” one of the guards said.
“Nice to have a doc on board with your credentials, though,”
the other guard added.
Tera immediately started digging at their ’links. Both were is-sued by the facility with a whole lot of proprietary info crammed onto their internal storage, and both were logged onto the site’s host. If she were trying this hack from the streets, she’d be struggling through the static, but from within the host, she was golden. It was only a second before she had a tap and was scan-ning the data they were examiscan-ning.
It wasn’t good news.
“Kit, we have an issue,” Tera sent through their secure chan-nel.
“What is it?” Kit replied, but Tera had already grabbed access to one of the guard’s ’links. Life in the Matrix was fast.
“Guards think they ID’d Chip as wanted. They have info on Chad scrolling. He’s burned.”
“Can you tweak the data? Blackout the links? Anything?”
Tera was already ahead of her, trying to cut them off or change the data. But it was too late.
“I’ve got nothing to save him. If we let him burn, you can go in quick. Use him as a distraction. Get the package and get out before the facial systems tag you. Security’s busy with him.”
“Is that the best plan? Or a personal call?” Kit’s voice was cold.
“I’d rather this all went smooth, but we’ve got no way to pull him out, except maybe Badger, and I’ve got no tricks to bust him free.”
“I’m good to go, boss,” Badger chimed in.
“What’s Chip doing?” Kit asked.
“Chatting,” Tera responded after fast scanning the audio of the last half-minute. “He’s quite calm for a runner having a chat with a pair of security guards.”
“Good. He’s supposed to be. Give him time. Watch the guards ’links. Jam any calls for back up. Warn Chip if there’s a serious issue. I’m working on an alternate solution now.”
“Scramble the video,” Kit called out.
She moved as soon as she said it, crossing the linoleum floor as fast as her vatgrown muscle could move her. Her left hand raked across the back of one guard’s head while her right slapped the neck of the other. Both blows held only enough force to warn the men of her presence, not enough to knock them down. That was the job of the chemicals. The poison from her claws quickly entered the blood and began cramping mus-cles, while the slap patch sent the second guard quickly to the land of Nod.
Chip swung around before the patch had found its mark, going after the other guard. One hand reached out to grab a wrist that was headed for either the PanicButton on his radio or the Predator on his hip, while the other grabbed a shoulder and pulled. The guard jerked forward, and Chip’s forehead crashed into the bridge of his nose.
Kit to scale the elevator shaft where there were no cameras for facial recognition. It was a good plan that kept Chip away from an unknown fate, but it was likely going to piss Tera off. Kit, though, worried about the job, not hurt feelings.
The pair were back at the door in under a minute. The long glass windows into the room showed rows and rows of patients being tended by a small army of drones. On this side, every-thing was fine, but beyond the door it would all be on Tera.
“Tera. Are we good to go?” Kit asked over the comms. Her voice was flat and unapologetic. It said, I know you’re pissed but keep it professional.
“He is,” Tera replied tersely, “I haven’t had time to make an ID for you since you weren’t supposed to be there.”
“Go,” Kit said to Chip with a nod.
Kit watched Chip slip through the door as it slid open. He glided smoothly among the open tubs holding the patients, glancing down at every one he passed. A few he stopped at, reached into their plastic prison and peeled open their eyelids.
Unsatisfied each time, he moved on. The drones buzzed by, ig-noring him while zipping to a patient after he disturbed their fitful slumber. As he moved further and further into the rows, Kit grew worried. What if the patient was gone? What if the info they had was old?
“Tera, verify and crosscheck the partial SIN we got with the patients in the room. See if we lost our target.”
“On it.”
Chip cleared another row of six before Tera came back.
“Three possibles. He’s passed two. The last is in the second to last row. This place mixes these things up all the time, though.
They’re constantly getting moved and updated. How close is he to the end?”
“Eight rows left,” Kit said, watching impatiently. Chip didn’t have a ’link on right now—too risky—so she couldn’t tell him to skip to the end.
As he reached the second-to-last row, Kit moved closer to the glass. The scene was familiar. Thousands of other people had stood just where she was, waiting just as anxiously. The reasons were different but the feelings were remarkably similar.
She held her breath when she saw Chip pause while looking down at one of the patients. The moments felt like an eternity as she watched him slowly reach into the small plastic tub with both hands and pull out their target. She was plastered against the glass, watching intently, waiting as Chip turned their prize toward her.
She gasped at the sight. Her run-hardened soul had seen much in her life. She’d faced terrors and survived harrowing events, but this was different. New. It meant a change in the world.
Staring at her were a pair of silver—not chromed, not grey, not shiny blue, but truly silver—eyes affixed in the head of a baby no more than two days old.
A baby born with the genetweak of hs father.
A baby that was the first to pass on the gross manipulations of man through the metahuman genome.
A baby that was going to make her a fortune.
Barclay enjoyed his work.
The short man stepped from the elevator on the 204th floor of the skyraker, his suit, his face, everything about him beneath notice. He was an old man, walking a new hallway, on about his business and of no conse-quence to anyone. He had cultivated this mask for many years. It had opened many doors for him.
The door ahead needed no charm or guile. He knocked once, twice, three times, and it slid open. The condo was sparse, modern, sleek, with a gorgeous view of the Thames by night. The sky was choked with smog, leaving the only starlight that mankind made below. He smiled gently. This was lovely. But it wasn’t why he was here.
He heard the crackling buzz of disengaging camou-flage, and the reflection in the window showed the slen-der, short humanoid frame of Echo. Or at least Echo’s proxy. The assassin never operated in person, after all.
And most times Echo was self-sufficient. But every now
And most times Echo was self-sufficient. But every now