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Bastien’s claws spasmed, making me cry out with pain. Inside, I cursed myself as weak, wondering what else those cries would draw. Inside, I welcomed Bendigo’s return, even as I dreaded what he’d do when he discovered what was happening with the data he’d wanted. Outside I sucked air as pain coursed through me, and tried not to scream, again.
“You can explain later,” Bendigo said, reminding me he knew I was doing something he wasn’t going to like. “Right now, we have to get out of here.”
I wanted to ask why, but the pain left no room for words.
“Have you transferred the files?” he asked, and I nodded.
“Are they still transferring?”
I nodded again, and he pulled me upright, lifting me clear of the Bastien Monster’s body, and shoving me toward the gap between the towers. I had just enough time to make sure Bastien’s defenses were off, before Bendigo shoved me through the space, and out into the chamber beyond.
“Can you decrypt them?”
Lying seemed the safest option.
“Maybe.”
I felt him poke at the parts of the implant he could reach—and then he poked at some of the parts he couldn’t. Dissatisfaction at finding Rohan’s barriers rolled through me, and then he was out of my head.
“Start working on it.”
And, because he expected it, “Already started.”
He favored me with a careful look, before turning away.
“You need me to get you out of here alive.”
Yeah. Like I didn’t know that.
I hadn’t known someone could send a smirk implant to implant. Smart ass.
He stepped quickly and carefully to the door.
“See what you can do about the lights.”
I dipped into the security system, and checked it out.
“Can’t do lights when there aren’t any installed,” I told him, just as we reached the broken door.
“Fine. See what you can do with those lights,” he said, indicating the strobing red and yellow outside the door.
I switched back into the network for the inner periphery, found what the node had left when it had gone off, and was very glad I hadn’t been there. The local systems were fine, but the nodes were gone. I hooked into the security feeds, to find out where the dog packs were, and checked that the doors had stayed locked.
The packs were patrolling, as though nothing was wrong. So far, so good. The doors were locked down even more tightly than before. The idea crossed my mind that there might be more computers in there that were separate to the servers I’d found in the Ghoul’s lair. It didn’t take long to check, although I was barely present as I followed Bendigo out.
There were connections, but they only opened from the server end, and they were tight shut, now. Bendigo’s voice brought me back to the present.
“Did you check on the hounds?”
“Yes.”
“Because they don’t seem friendly.”
“Ah.”
I had checked on the hounds, but I hadn’t tried entering their sub-net. I did that, now.
“Oh, crap.”
“Thought so.”
Bendigo started firing, as I brought up the schematics for the inner periphery, highlighting the dogs. Three packs, all closing.
“You sure that’s all of them?”
“Nope.”
“Is this section self-contained, or can I expect more Ghouls?”
I thought briefly about telling him there would always be more Ghouls, but there were other, more pressing, matters to attend to.
“You got anything that resembles EMP?”
Bendigo backed up a step, and I heard five rumbling growls.
“Why?”
“Contingencies.”
“Why the fuck did I bring you?”
Because I was the retrieval specialist... right.
“You’re the one that’s supposed to get me out alive.”
“Just do your job!” and I felt the edge of a familiar tightness ring my throat, a dull ache throb through my wrists.
Right. Like that was going to help.
“It’ll make me feel better.”
Fantastic.
No EMP meant I couldn’t fry the circuits of the sub-net the dogs were on. Not that that was guaranteed to do anything more than stop them from acting in a coordinated fashion. So, no EMP, and an obvious switch in the way they perceived our DNA and scent, since we’d been introduced to them as friends rather than foe. Given that was in the programming affecting their net, I could maybe do something about that... if I had enough time.
I glanced at the map, and saw a door—two feet away. Another glance confirmed it. I flipped to the security feeds; there was no point getting us away from this pack only to discover I’d dumped us into range of something even more lethal. My ears ached with the effort of trying to catch the first sound of the doggies’ contingency plan coming into effect, and I hoped we weren’t anywhere near the stretch of corridor we’d watched them go dormant in.
The room appeared empty, so I toggled the setting on the security feed, running through a couple of spectrums of light, and checking the room for unexplained movement. Nothing. On anything. Unless you counted the empty gurney, the shelf of neatly laid-out instruments in front of the glass-fronted observation window, the empty cage in one corner, and the desk with its computer, monitors and accompanying book case. All empty. Like the shadows I scanned, but couldn’t quite see into.
Whatever went on in this room, it wasn’t going on, now, hadn’t been interrupted at an inopportune time, and wasn’t about to start up, again—at least, not yet. I wrapped a hand around Bendigo’s belt, and took the four relatively short steps I needed to get to the door. To my relief he followed the draw of my hand, but kept his Blazer, and his attention, on the dogs.
It only took a moment to manipulate the locking mechanism via the security net, and then I let the door swing open. Every instinct I had was screaming at me to get into the cover of the room, but I took the time to sweep it with my very Mark I eyeballs, before pulling Bendigo into it, and kicking the door closed.
Activating the locking mechanism took just a few seconds of thought, as did checking that the door to the observation room was still locked, and so was the exit beside the desk. As soon as I was sure we were relatively secure, I left the guarding to Bendigo, and sank into the sub-net connecting the dogs together. Somewhere in here, I had to find the switch Bendigo had flicked, when he’d blasted the server-room door, and, when I did, I had to work out how to flick it back.
Piece of cake, right?
Or it would be, if I wasn’t operating to a strict time limit, one that would see me coated in a nanite-swarm programmed to do the stars knows what when they landed.
“Don’t think about it. Just do what you need to do.” Bendigo’s voice, oddly soothing. Strange that, given how used to his threats I was becoming.
I wondered what was going wrong outside.
“Nothing that won’t be fixed when you fix those dogs.”
So much for soothing, and not thinking about it.
I forced myself to focus on locating the doggie sub-net. It wasn’t hard to find. It was in exactly the same place I’d found it the last time, in fact. It had an extra layer of security over it, though. That hadn’t been there the last time. Cool. Fine. I could fix this.
I pulled up the hacking sub-routine I’d used on the Ghoul’s computer, and set it to work, while examining the sub-net for any other changes. At first, I didn’t find anything, but then I did—a new line of code. This one didn’t have any cool visuals to represent it. So, I poked it. Of course, I did.
And nothing happened.
“Here doggie, doggie, doggie,” I whispered, applying a diagnostics program, and, just like that, the meaning came; the code morphed in front of me, components rearranging themselves as though the diagnostics program had acted as a stimulus, triggering a reaction.
In my head, I scrambled back from the sub-net perimeter, trying to avoid the long talons that reached for me, trying to get away from the chitinous outline pulling itself clear of the sub-net’s outer framework, and that was when the second layer of the Ghoul’s trap became apparent.
I was stuck. Filaments of code wound around me, holding me fast, sticking me to the spot as the monster creature advanced. Insect? Arachnoid? Something else? I kept trying to work my way back, to follow the path I’d taken coming in, but I couldn’t. A myriad of tiny hooks tangled in my clothing, in my hair, making minute indentations and pin-prick piercings through my skin.
The attack-program construct loomed over me, and I saw fangs, pedipalps, three more sets of legs, and I struggled even harder. Above me, the creature vibrated, and a thousand hairs flew out around us, each one bearing a needle-sharp tip. I tried to curl into a ball, to protect myself from the rain—and only succeeded in conjuring the umbrella that had served me so well in my battle with Nude-Bastien.
It served me just as well, again, spreading out to cover my curled-up form, as the hairs fell around me. I wondered how well it would do against their sharp tips, and listened to the pitter-patter of them landing on the umbrella’s rounded surface. Now, I thought, would be a good time to move.
If only I could.
I was still stuck fast, only now my skin was crawling. It felt as though a myriad of ants were skittering over me, dragging lengths of cotton behind them.
“Oh. Hell. No.”
They were tying me down, sticking me more firmly in one place, while the arachnoid loomed over me. I didn’t want to think about exactly how effective my umbrella was going to be against its fangs. I just wanted to get into the sub-net, because I was running out of time, and I didn’t want to wake up to find my real-world body being devoured, or dissolved, by a million-billion-trillion tiny computer bugs.
I forced myself to stay still. Struggling wasn’t doing any good, and I needed to think. I was caught just as firmly as any bug caught in any web, and I wasn’t big enough, or powerful enough, to break the webs and escape on my own. I didn’t think I was even carrying a program that could do the job.
No, whatever I was going to come up with, was going to have to be written on the fly. I only hoped my implant was up to the task—and that I could get the coding out past the barriers Rohan had built.
“They’re not meant to stop you,” he said, coming into my mind, and I gasped.
“What are you doing here?”
“Found the ship. You are brilliant, by the way.”
“Not so brilliant,” I said, and let him see the situation, “or I wouldn’t be in this mess.”
“Whoah! That thing is AWESOME!”
“Not so much when it’s about to eat you.”
“I can take it.”
“You can what?”
“I can take it.”
But I had other ideas.
“You’re in this net, right? Like, in Bastien’s inner periphery?”
“Yeah. I had to find you.”
“I need you to reprogram the dogs. Get them to see Bendigo and me as friends, or not prey, or whatever it is they’re seeing us as.”
He was quiet for a long time, but he was still there. I could sense him, crouching inside my implant, and then wandering out and into the doggie sub-net. His steps shook the web that held me, but got no reaction from the spider, I assumed was still looming above.
“Already done,” he said, coming back, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
“For real? That was quick.”
“I didn’t do it.”
Oh.
“I’d better wake up,” I said, then, “Get Odyssey to find me.”
“Mack’s on his way,” Rohan reassured me and faded from my skull.
Mack was on his way? I tried to think about that, but the arachnoid had other plans. I didn’t have to test the umbrella’s effectiveness against its fangs. Instead, I found myself detached from the web, and lifted back into the sanctity of my own implant as the strands dissipated from around me. The arachnoid disappeared, too, and I felt Bendigo shaking my shoulder.
“Hey. Wake up. Get your mental ass back to me. To me. Got it?”
Yeah, I got it. I opened my eyes and glared at him, then felt my eyes widen as I realized we weren’t alone. Funny thing was, I didn’t remember us having company—and I distinctly remembered locking all the doors. The three guys in lab coats had to have come from somewhere—and I was darn sure someone had to have let them in.
I looked past Bendigo, running my gaze over their faces and putting each of them into Bastien’s database, just as fast as I could scan them. And then I realized Bendigo hadn’t let go of my shoulder, even as he was quietly relieving me of the Blazer that had been hanging around my neck.
“What’s going on?” I asked, switching my attention back to my boss.
He seemed to be very calm, and yet his lips were compressed into two thin lines as though he was very, very angry. I felt the noose around my neck tighten, and the dull ache in my wrists returning.
“Bendi—” but the noose tightened, cutting off any chance I had of forming words.
“I had a chat with Bastien,” he said, pinning me with a forearm across my chest, and leaning on me.
The man was heavy. It wasn’t like he had to apply any pressure, but he was pushing hard. I stared at him, and knew that the metaphorical fist in my gut was fear. If Bastien were really here, though, it might have been his fist curling around my intestines, instead of a mere emotion.
I opened my mouth to say something, but the noose hadn’t eased. In fact, it tightened, and I had trouble drawing air. Bendigo pushed his face close to mine
“Let me into your head.”
I felt my face go cold, and the fear spread from the pit of my stomach and into my throat, where it sat like a cold lump.
“You can’t.” Rohan, and I’d never been happier, or more mortified to hear his voice.
“What do you mean?” and the little turd threw down a program that acted like a set of locking bars over every single section of my implant that he’d secured. There was no way Bendigo was going to miss that.
I heard steel sing as it was pulled from a scabbard, felt the edge of the blade Bendigo carried press against the shoulder seam of my shirt, and made myself go as still as still under his weight. I wanted to close my eyes, but I also wanted to see what he was doing, so my gaze flicked from his face to what I could see of the blade from the corner of my eye.
And then there was a susurration of sound and the wall vibrated beneath me. Bendigo flinched, but he didn’t let me up, or pull me away from the wall.
“Looks like Bastien is here to play,” he said, and a sudden heaviness pulled on the fabric of my shirt, as a million-billion-trillion legs poured off the wall and over my shoulder, parting to avoid Bendigo’s forearm, before they worked their way under the shirt and over my skin.
I tried to squirm away. There was no way I was going to stand still while they... while they...
My clothes fell away, except for the strip of cloth beneath Bendigo’s arm, and he laughed. I might have cussed at the sudden bareness of my feet, given how hard good boots were to find, but the loss of my good quality footwear was the least of my problems, even if the wave of legs vanished from my skin and the hiss of sound vanished from my ears.
Were they gone, or just dormant? It was a question that went unanswered because one of the doctors stepped forward, and I caught sight of the needle. It was a good thing Bendigo was pinning me in place.
“You need to shut it down,” he said, when the doctor had finished giving me the shot and was moving back to the bench beneath the observation room glass.
“Shut what down?” I asked, and prayed Mack would be here soon.
Bendigo laid the blade’s edge along the hollow between two ribs—just below the hole Monster-Bastien had made with his hand. I gasped as it slid through skin, and started into muscle. Terror clogged my throat, locking away my voice, as I thought about asking him to stop.
“Don’t!” Bastien’s command cut across the room, and Bendigo lifted the knife away.
I watched, wide-eyed as a second doctor approached, almost laughed as Bendigo was hit with a shot that looked bigger than the one that had been given to me. It wasn’t funny, though. He jerked his head around, and looked down at his arm, just as the third doctor stepped in close.
I don’t know what that doctor did, but Bendigo convulsed against me, and then staggered back a step. He would have fallen, except there were clones to catch him, clones that had arrived with a second gurney. I might have moved away from the wall, and tried to make a break for it, but the wall was all that was holding me up, and I wanted to see what was going on.
I also didn’t want the Ghouls touching me, because, all of sudden, there were a lot of them in the room. The open door beside the observation chamber explained where they’d come from, and I already knew I’d missed them because of the way Bendigo had been up in my face.
Bendigo was shouting... or, at least, he was trying to.
“We had a deal,” he seemed to be saying. “We had a deal.”
And one of the Ghouls walked over to where the others were strapping him down to a gurney. It laid a hand against his cheek and bent forward, smiling.
“I know we did, Gav, but then I decided I didn’t need you anymore, and you had to go and escape and bring the hurt back with you. You should have known I’d have told you anything just to have more of you to play with.”
“You—” but whatever name-calling Bendigo was going to do was cut short, as an attending Ghoul stuffed a gag into his mouth and fastened it tight. Bastien the Ghoul, the real Bastien this time, stroked his hand down the length of Bendigo’s body, and smiled.
“Let me just get your little friend settled, and then I’ll get back to you. Perhaps I can get the two of you to be a chorus, before we’re through.”
A chorus? I didn’t like the sound of that. And I really didn’t like the idea of being ‘settled’, especially not if it had anything to do with being strapped to the second gurney that had been wheeled into the room. Nuh. Uh. No way. A whole world of nope-nope-nopes right there.
“Rohan,” I managed, surprised to find it was hard to form a single coherent thought.
There was a really good reason I hadn’t moved from the wall, because the stars only knew just how badly I didn’t want to be there.
“Rohan!”
And he came back into my head, cautiously, as though he was afraid of what he’d find.
“You ever driven a human?”
“Are you drunk?”
Honestly, there was no time for this.
“Drugged. Drive me out of here, before something bad happens to me?”
It was more of a plea than I wanted it to be, but the boy understood.
“I’ll try.”
That was all I wanted to hear, and I wasn’t sure what the results would be. Those depended on if the drug they’d injected affected muscles and not just neural centers. Rohan could hack in and act as a surrogate for my own physiological control center, but if they’d given me something to block its commands to the muscles, or something that affected the muscles directly, there’d be nothing he could do.
I saw Bastien the Real turn away from Bendigo, saw him look toward me, and knew I was out of time. I pushed away from the wall, hoping Rohan could stop me falling. I’ll give Bastien this, he thought I was being funny as Hell.
“You’re going to try and run?” he asked, and actually stopped to fold his arms, and look at me.
“Well,” he said. “Go ahead. It should be entertaining.”
Entertaining, huh? Well, whatever turned him on. If he wanted to be entertained, who was I to deny the strange, weird little guy his fun? I tried to turn toward the door, and would definitely have fallen over, if Rohan hadn’t figured out which neurons to fire.
“You stay out of this,” he said. “Just keep the permissions open, and I’ll keep you moving.”
Oh, he would, would he? The little brat.
“I could just let you fall.”
And a smart-assed little brat, at that.
I could hear him laughing as the world went wobbly.
“Man! What did they give you? You’re like trying to drive a freighter when the drive-spin is off.”
And I so wanted to hear what had happened the last time he’d tried that.
“Really? Well...”
He side-stepped me through the open doorway to the corridor. I noticed the dogs were still gathered outside it, and wondered if they’d try to eat me, now.
“Nah, Bastien fixed that up while you were stuck in the web.”
Thanks, kid.
I hoped Bastien didn’t decide to change his mind, as I wobbled through the dogs, and then heard Tens snicker.
“It won’t matter if he does,” the comms tech said.
Great, I thought. Now, I’m on a party line.
“Kid needed some help,” and I knew Tens was smiling, as he added, “Watch this.”
I tried, but every time I tried to turn my head, it felt like I was going to fall over, and I discovered that Rohan had a robust, but limited, vocabulary of swears. In fact, I think the only one he’d mastered was the word ‘fuck’, but he could use it well, with half a dozen tonal shades of meaning. I’d have laughed, if I wasn’t the reason he was swearing. Actually, I’d have laughed, anyway, but all I really wanted to do was let fly with my own vocabulary of swears, just as soon as I could find it.
“Mind your mouth, kid,” Tens told him. “Your mum might be listening.”
Rohan’s fluid cussing came to a sudden halt, and I almost felt sorry for him.
In the meantime, Tens’ own piece of cleverness was getting to its feet and adeptly avoiding my clumsy, kid-piloted rush for the exit. All five of the dogs, stood and brushed past me, accompanied by rumbling growls that I felt in my bones, and through my skin. Bastien stopped being amused, and Bendigo was suddenly worried about something other than what his ex-partner was going to do to him when he returned to the gurney.
Behind me, I heard the all too familiar hiss of a myriad of tiny feet, overshadowed by Tens’ most evil laugh.
“Don’t kill them!” That was Agent Delight.
What was she doing here? There. Wherever the fuck she was.
“I’m a lot closer than you think, sweetie,” she said, and all I could think was, “Damn, I really am on a party line.”
“You have no idea,” Mack chimed in, and then added, “Just hold on. We’re coming.”
“Oh, those you can kill.” Delight again, and I’d clearly missed some side-discussion she’d been having with Tens. Behind me, came the sound of screams. It was followed by a sharp reprimand, as I crashed into a wall.
“Don’t look, boy! Just drive!”
“Sorry,” then, clearly to someone else. “She won’t remember this, will she?”
Tens’ response was typically dry.
“You better hope not, kiddo. Don’t think she found that wall at all funny.”
But he was laughing, damn him. I could hear it in his voice—and then, just as suddenly, he was deadly serious. “Joss, you need to open the door, but not until the dogs are there. Okay?”
Door?
Oh.
That door.
The one leading to the airlock and the outer periphery.
“There’s an outer periphery?”
That thought came from three different minds. Rohan stayed silent. I think he was trying to keep me upright. I thought of the keypad and the lock, felt the world swoop and dive around me, even though I was rock-steady on my feet.
“Good driving,” I managed to say, and knew I was going to fall into an abyss of unconsciousness really soon, made a note to have some sort of counter-agent made for the common drugs, encapsulated and added to the implant’s hardware.
“Focus, Cutter!” Mack, slapping me back to reality with just the roar of his voice. “Door. Lock. Unlock.”
“Kay...” I said, surprising myself with the sound of my own voice.
The three grown-ups swore, but Rohan stayed silent. He was busy, and I knew why. I could almost hear the frantic speed at which his fingers drove the keyboard, as he drove me. I tried to focus, to stay conscious, just for him.
“Kay.” My voice slurred, and I had trouble finding the part of the program I’d accessed to change the codes on the doors, all the doors, and when I found it, I stopped.
“You there?”
There was silence, as the four of them read my worry, and my intent.
“Don’t you dare!” Tens shouted, over the skitter of claws.
“Almost,” Delight murmured, and I wasn’t sure whether or not to believe her, given just how easily she lied.
“Almost,” she insisted, and sent me her location on the maps they had, which prompted me to open the door locks, even as I added the security data in my head to the data streaming out of it.
“Oh, clever girl,” Tens said, as my mind went dark, and Rohan added a new word to his swears, while Mack and Delight cussed me out in unison.
Honestly. I’d give them ‘lack of stamina’ and ‘gutless’... just as soon as I was back on my feet.
