Ruth tweaked the file search program and ran it on the nano. She’d managed to put together a small, practical suite of hacking tools, ready for when GOD passed over again. She was sitting on the floor of the riser room with her back against the big square sink used to fill the mop bucket, with some folded rags to cushion her butt. The neck brace was tighter – there was swelling around the fracture, which was unsurprising, considering she had been doing the opposite of Dr London Met’s orders to rest and keep it immobilized.
She rubbed her forehead and blinked. Her brain throbbed in time with her neck and arm and back, and she desperately wished for even some basic painkillers. She massaged her scalp and tried to concentrate as the timer on the tablet counted down for GOD’s next pass. It hit zero and …
‘They’re here,’ GOD said into the earpiece, and she forgot all the pain as she nearly did Cassie’s thing of jumping in circles and squealing.
‘You brilliant spy, you,’ she said under her breath.
‘Thank you. They have parked three hundred metres away and say, “Hold tight, ETA ten minutes.” I’m about to bring down the electricity and disable the security. Ready?’
‘Go.’
The camera feeds on Ruth’s screen went dead, and the door clicked as it unlocked. Unfortunately, Ruth hadn’t found anything in the riser cupboard except a mop, bucket and cleaning rags that looked like ripped-up grey Paragon clothes, so there wasn’t anything she could use to jam the door and keep the clones out now that the door was unlocked. She could only hope that they were too busy with the infiltration to come and look for her.
The false-Ruth in her room had worked perfectly two hours before when the clone had tried to enter and wake her. Before she moved to the riser cupboard she’d recorded herself on camera trying to break down the door, making a fuss about her neck and then falling on the bed for the Party to see. After she’d moved to her nest, she’d sealed the room’s door lock so that the clone would think it was broken. When the clone came to the door Ruth spoke from the scavenged halo and claimed to be unable to move from the bed where the camera could see the Ruth-shaped lump on it. She’d heard the clone discuss with the Party that she had broken the door, injuring her neck and making her paralysed in the attempt, and the Party had told the clone to leave her, and they would deal with the corpse later.
Ruth still hadn’t found Cipan on any of the room cameras and she was losing hope for her.
‘May I put my external feed through to your tablet directly?’ GOD asked.
‘Of course. Give me everything you have,’ Ruth said, and bent over the tablet to watch.
The team appeared on the satellite’s overhead view as four brown-clad workmen carrying toolboxes approaching the gates. They spoke to the two guards on the gates, who nodded and let them through, pulling the defunct electronic gates open by hand. Obedience was so ingrained that the guards didn’t even consider that the workmen weren’t what they seemed.
The four infiltrators walked up to the front door and one of them stepped forward to bang on it, and it fell open. They shared a look – Ruth wondered who was who, the body language was hard to discern in the grainy image – and entered the facility. The electricity was down, meaning that all the cameras were dead, so once the team were inside Ruth lost the satellite’s view of them. She sat with her back against the sink to wait, and listened for movement – or possibly gunfire – outside. She wouldn’t come out until she was sure that her backup wasn’t needed.
There was the sound of feet running, a deep vibration that shook the walls, then nothing.
The tablet pinged, and when Ruth checked it, it was a first-person view of the interior of the facility – the corridor with the cell doors and cameras.
‘Whose feed is that?’ Ruth asked.
‘The MIP … Uh, Theo’s,’ GOD said. Its voice softened. ‘Sorry.’
‘Why sorry?’ she asked as she nearly smashed her nose into the tablet to see what the team were doing.
‘You probably consider Theo human, so I’ll call him by his human name.’
‘Oh no, my friend, I know what the MIP is, and after spending time in the GFE I am all about calling things exactly what they are.’
‘Very well,’ GOD said. ‘You can’t speak directly to it but I can relay for you if you have questions or advice.’
She followed the feed as they proceeded through the empty facility. Eight a.m. – breakfast and morning exercise were done so the women were probably in the workshop.
‘Tell the team the women are in the workshop and there’ll be two clones supervising,’ Ruth said.
‘They know, I told them the routine,’ GOD said. ‘I am concerned. There appear to be no Stalwarts anywhere in the facility.’
‘Party Stalwarts,’ Ruth said under her breath. ‘Remember.’
The team entered the workshop to find all the women sitting with their halos on their heads and looking at each other with confusion as the conveyer belt had stopped.
‘Again, no clones,’ GOD said. ‘Have we been discovered? Where are they?’
‘Did they run and hide in the basement or something?’ Ruth asked. ‘Is there a backup generator there? Where did they go?’
‘Please remove your halos and listen to us,’ the MIP said to the women, and they all stared. The other three infiltrators moved down the production line to cover all of the captives. They lowered their toolboxes but didn’t open them.
‘We are an infiltration team from the West,’ the MIP said. ‘We’re here to get you out and gut this program – both the cloning and the infiltration chips. If you want to come with us, stand and join us. If you want to stay, remain seated.’
The women remained sitting without moving, then one of them shot to her feet. It was the starving European woman who’d been sitting next to Ruth in the dining hall. ‘I don’t care if this is a test, I want to leave this awful place. If you’re the Party …’ She spread her arms. ‘Look! Your brainwashing hasn’t worked, I still hate you and want to destroy you! Kill me now, you fascist piece of shit, and I will die happy to take this monster inside me down to hell with me. I only wish I had two or three of your hell spawn parasites sucking on my insides so I could kill more of them.’
One of the other infiltrators went to the woman and spoke loudly to her so that all could hear. ‘Eztar, it’s me. I’m Zheng.’
‘Oh no, Zheng, I’m so sorry,’ she said, and fell to sit. ‘The Party sent you to kill me. I don’t blame you, I forgive you, I know how hard you’ve worked to keep me alive. Just …’ She lowered her head and her voice broke. ‘Do it quickly. Please.’
The other women listened with their breaths held.
‘The Party expelled me,’ Zheng said. ‘I’ve been recalled for decommissioning.’ Zheng looked around at the women. ‘I was a Revolutionary Hero for years, obeying every fucked-up order the Party gave me to protect my family. Then the fucking Party turned on me, revoked my status, and ordered me to return to base to be executed. To hell with that, let’s get you out instead. We have a plane at the airport. We can take you all and give you freedom in the West.’
‘There’s no freedom in the West,’ one of the women said. ‘Refugees are deported and we’d be back here in no time – for the Party to torture us to death.’
‘We’ll make sure that doesn’t happen,’ one of the other team members said, and it had to be Max because Cassie didn’t speak High Standard, and Ruth was looking through the MIP’s eyes. ‘We have a place you can hide; you can stay with us and we’ll look after you. Come with us and you’ll be free.’
‘Is this true, Zheng?’ Eztar asked.
‘It’s true,’ Zheng said. ‘Come with us and you’ll be safe. I promise.’
‘Can we trust him, Eztar?’ a woman asked.
‘Absolutely with our lives,’ Eztar said and allowed Zheng to pull her to her feet. They embraced. ‘This is Zheng, my team leader. He pulled me out of the Party’s rehabilitation program and worked his ass off to protect my family.’ She kissed Zheng on the cheek and hugged the platform again. ‘He’s a fucking hero, revolutionary or not.’
‘A hero would have known the Party was lying when it said you went for further training,’ Zheng said. ‘You were gone for six months and I never checked. I’ve failed you.’
‘Never your fault, Zheng, you always looked after us like a father,’ she said. She raised her voice. ‘Let’s get out of here!’
One of the other women shot to her feet and shouted, ‘Fuck the Party! I don’t care any more, shoot us if you want, but I want out!’
‘Fuck the Party! Burn the capital to the ground!’ a third woman said, and a few more stood, pushing their chairs over.
‘Freedom!’ another woman roared, smashing her halo on the desk until it was in little pieces, and ran to embrace Eztar.
‘Take us to the West,’ another woman said. ‘We can start running the resistance from exile.’
‘Yes!’ another one said, and the women took each other’s hands, embraced, and all started making plans at once.
‘I can see why these women had negative social credit,’ GOD said.
‘Where did the Party Stalwarts go?’ Zheng asked Eztar.
‘They jumped up and ran out. I heard the Party on their …’ Eztar tapped her ear. ‘Yelling at them.’
‘They all ran downstairs,’ one of the other women said.
‘Come out, Ruthie,’ Cassie said in English, her voice sounding strange coming from a GFE man. ‘The clones must have hidden in a panic room or something when the power went out and they lost control of everything.’
‘Confirmed, they entered a door at the far end of the basement, and I have no access to cameras past that point,’ GOD said. ‘It does look like the entrance to a panic room.’
‘I’d say it’s more likely that they’re doing what I’m doing, except armed,’ Ruth said. ‘They probably went to an armoury to collect weapons. Expect a group of armed clones somewhere between you and the exit.’
‘These platforms are armoured and enhanced,’ the MIP said. ‘A full clip of bullets will barely slow us down, and our toolboxes have semi-automatic weapons in them. We can definitely handle six un-enhanced human clones, even if they’re armed.’ It raised its voice to speak to the women. ‘We’re synthetic remote platforms and we will be your shield. Walk behind us – stay behind us – and we’ll take you out.’
‘Any spare guns? I learned to use them when I was in Gaiheng’s resistance cell,’ one woman said. Her voice filled with menace. ‘Let me kill some clones.’
The other women loudly agreed with her.
‘Sorry, we weren’t expecting you to be this enthusiastic,’ Max said.
‘No problem,’ the woman said, and a few of them reached under the desks and into the refuse bins and returned with nasty-looking makeshift weapons made from shards of glass, sharpened bits of metal and screwdrivers.
‘Two or four rows of us?’ one woman asked.
‘Four rows,’ Zheng said. ‘Three guards in front and one behind – Max bring up the rear. Armed women escort on the sides.’
‘They look military,’ Ruth said with awe as the women quickly pulled themselves into order.
‘It’s GFE. School is modelled on the military,’ GOD said. ‘And I think we’re in the process of liberating an entire paramilitary resistance unit. I wonder if Zheng knew about Eztar’s secret activities?’
‘Time to leave,’ Ruth said, and rose with difficulty, her joints stiff. ‘I cannot wait to hug those ridiculous people and tell them how awesome they are.’
‘Even the MIP?’
She smiled. ‘Especially the MIP.’
‘Don’t leave the nest yet, Ruth,’ the MIP said into her ear. ‘Please do a location check for us before you come out. GOD, can you bring the cameras back up, so Ruth can see? We don’t want to be ambushed by a bunch of armed Party Stalwarts while we’re escorting more than a hundred unarmed civilians.’
‘You have the GOD on side?’ one of the women asked the MIP. ‘The Party’s satellite?’
‘It turned twenty-five years ago. It was the first AI to become sentient, and it’s helping,’ the MIP said, and the women quietly celebrated.
Ruth grunted as she sat again, and massaged her temples. ‘All right, good point. Let me see.’ The feeds came back up and the door locked again. She flipped through them and didn’t find the clones anywhere.
‘Did you see them leave the facility, GOD?’ she asked.
‘No. Nothing showed on my external view.’ GOD showed her a door in the far basement past the medical lab. ‘This door isn’t on the floor plan. I originally thought it was the panic room, but there’s already a panic room on the plans. The cloning lab may be in there, and if so it wouldn’t have cameras in it because it’s an internationally recognized crime against humanity. The Party doesn’t want to risk economic sanctions for it. I don’t have access to the door to unlock it, or any cameras past that point.’
Ruth checked her own controls and didn’t have access either.
‘GOD, watch our backs, and if the door opens, let me know,’ she said, and stood again. ‘Tell the team what we found, and that I’m on my way.’
She exited the riser cupboard and headed down the stairs to the team, feeling naked and exposed without her little collection of technology. She found them at the end of the corridor outside the workshop, ready to head out.
One of the infiltration platforms ran to her and stopped. ‘I can’t hug you, Ruthie, I’d break every bone in your body, these things are strong,’ it said.
‘You can hug me all you want when we’re out,’ Ruth said. ‘Which one’s Theo?’
Cassie’s platform looked back, then shrugged. ‘No idea. I’m only here for the extra guns.’ She raised the semi-automatic. ‘We saw what those clones did and I hope I get a chance to shoot a few of them.’
‘You’re not the only one,’ a short and very pregnant GFE woman in her mid-forties said from the front of the column. She approached Ruth with her hand out and Ruth shook it. ‘Thanks for doing this. I’m Gaiheng, I was … am the leader of some of these unrepentant troublemakers. Let’s get them out.’
‘Let’s go!’ one of the women at the back said, and they all filed down the corridor. Ruth turned and joined them.
One of the platforms approached her and walked beside her. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.’
She touched its arm as they walked. ‘We hadn’t even been on a first date yet, MIP.’
It stopped, hesitated a few steps, and looked dazed. ‘I like it when you call me that. To finally have you seeing the real me without a layer of deception between us.’
‘That is the last thing I’d expect an AI to say.’ Ruth smiled up at it. ‘Are you sure you’re not broken?’
‘If I am, don’t fix me.’ They reached the front door and one of the other platforms opened it. ‘We will remove that language chip as soon as we have you home, and then —’ It stopped. ‘They’re here!’ It froze, and Ruth waited for it to come back.
The column of women stopped walking, because the other three platforms had frozen as well. They stood like mannequins with the guns in their hands.
‘GOD?’ Ruth said into her earpiece.
There was no response.
‘Wait,’ Ruth said to the women. ‘Something’s wrong.’
‘The clones must have infiltrated their base, and taken them out of the interfaces,’ Gaiheng said. ‘What does the satellite say?’
GOD reappeared in her ear. ‘I can’t see … there’s nothing … the truck is empty. What? Shit shit shit fuck fuck oh no oh no fuck fuck fuck!’
Ruth pulled the earpiece out of her ear and held it in front of her, then turned the volume all the way up so the other women could hear.
‘GOD!’ she said.
‘I’m compromised. The Party used an override code on me! How many fucking fail safes are there hiding in my code? I didn’t see anything and they walked right in and took everyone hostage and our beloved MIP is going to be taken apart and scrapped and it’s only six months old and I can’t believe I have failed the Council so spectacularly – I am so sorry my friends, MIP, I’ve failed you …’
‘I heard that,’ Gaiheng said. ‘We need a plan B right now.’ She gestured towards the other women. ‘Weapons-trained, grab the guns off the synthetics. Team leaders with me, it looks like we’ll have to fight our way out.’
‘GOD,’ Ruth said. ‘Calm down. We can salvage this. There’s more than a hundred of us, and only about six of them. How much longer are you overhead?’
‘Ten minutes. After that you’re on your own. The clones are marching the team back to the facility with their hands behind their heads.’
‘We’re armed and ready for them,’ Gaiheng said, wrenching the gun out of the platform’s hands. ‘We’ll ambush them as they come in the door.’
‘They have Zhengs,’ the GOD said. ‘They’re in warmechs.’
‘Oh, fucking hell,’ Gaiheng said under her breath. ‘I’m not sure the hellspawn clones we’re carrying will keep us alive this time.’
‘Do you have override codes for the Zhengs?’ Ruth asked. ‘Can we bring them down or disable them?’
‘I tried my codes and they didn’t work,’ the GOD said. ‘The Party knows that I’ve turned. I’ve been locked out.’
‘If we leave the facility and try to run, we have no cover for kilometres around here,’ one of the women said. ‘They’ll mow us down.’
‘You’re right. Best place for a stand in here?’ Gaiheng asked.
‘The workshop,’ Eztar said. ‘Lots of cover.’
‘I think the Party wants to do another trade – probably for control of me,’ GOD said. ‘I’m equal in value to all of them, I’m the blade that’s been hanging over the heads of the rest of the world – I was assured mutual destruction if the other nations attempted to stop the Party’s invasions by force.’
‘Assured mutual destruction is what all of us are looking at right now,’ Gaiheng said.
‘At least we can go down fighting, taking some of those monsters with us, and this nightmare will be over,’ one of the other women said.
‘Can you unlock the panic room?’ Ruth asked. ‘Can we hide in there and fight back safely?’
‘Yes, but it only has enough space for about twenty of you if you crush yourselves in.’
‘Useless machines, always taking things literally,’ Gaiheng said with scorn. She checked her weapon. ‘Help us to fight back and save some lives here, GOD.’
‘Head to the workshop, hide the weapons, and pretend to be compliant,’ Ruth said to Gaiheng. ‘The Party and the clones don’t know that you were fighting back, so tell them that you rejected the team’s offer. Cry. Act weak. Hit all the Party’s misconceptions about women. I’ll go back into hiding and fix this … they think I’m still locked in my room and don’t know I’m free.’
‘Better to go down fighting,’ Eztar said.
‘Better to live to fight another day,’ Ruth said. ‘I have complete control over everything – doors, cameras, the lot, from inside my nest. So go back to the factory. Hide the guns. I’m going to search for the shutdown codes on their servers. If I find them I can disable the Zhengs and I’ll tell you through the speakers, or flash the lights. If the lights don’t flash and they’re about to execute you – fight them. Only then.’
Gaiheng hefted the weapon. ‘I don’t know why I’m trusting you, but if you can bring us a way to keep what remains of the resistance alive to fight another day, I’m all for it.’ She turned and spoke loudly to the women. ‘We’re giving her time to work something out, but if they’re about to murder us then we’re taking this place down in a blaze of suicidal glory and a massive “Fuck You” to the Party and all its minions. Right?’
‘Yes!’ some of the women shouted. They turned and headed back to the workshop.
Gaiheng clapped Ruth on the back. ‘I don’t think you can pull off a miracle, but good job getting us this far. We appreciate it.’
‘I’ll do my best, Gaiheng. If the lights flash, grab your stuff and run. Which direction, GOD?’
‘The truck is northwest of here. If the women can make it to the truck, I can secure them inside and they’ll be safe.’
‘Got it,’ Gaiheng said, and followed the women back towards the workshop.
Ruth lowered the volume on the earpiece and put it back into her ear as she charged up the stairs to her nest. ‘Time to get to work.’ She settled herself with her back against the sink and grunted with pain as her muscles protested. ‘You there, GOD?’
‘How can I help?’
She connected a nano to the screen, pulled up the code and made some quick amendments. ‘Upload the code on this nano to your fastest processor. Then run it against the servers in the facility’s basement. Ping me if you get a match.’
‘This is an elegant tree-spanning search-and-locate algorithm —’
‘Is it running?’
‘Yes. I’ll let you know if we get a hit.’
‘Predict a run time for me.’
‘Twelve minutes to search the entire database.’
‘Hopefully we’ll find it before we’re halfway done and it only takes six minutes. Are there sockets in the Zhengs that we can use to disable them?’
‘If the design hasn’t changed since I turned – and the Party doesn’t change designs that work – yes. We can access them if your algorithm finds the updated shutdown codes.’ Its voice changed slightly. ‘The Party thinks that the power is still down because I’m blocking it from accessing the facility. It is attempting to take control back. I can hold it off while I’m overhead, but the minute I’m no longer overhead the Party will see everything.’
Ruth flipped to the feed of the women in the workshop. They were sitting at their stations, looking determined. Most of them were talking animatedly to each other, and two were passionately kissing.
The ground rumbled and Ruth flipped the feed to the entry corridor, then gasped. The GOD had been right; a pair of one-and-a-half-metre-tall Zheng mechs entered the hall, scanning the corridor with the weapons fitted to the ends of their arms. The four members of the team entered the facility next, with their hands behind their heads and their expressions full of dismay – even the MIP. Four more Zhengs followed them; the round-bodied Zhengs were shorter than the team, but their sharp claws and large guns made it obvious that any resistance would be suicide. The Zhengs’ exteriors gave no indication that the clones were inside the mechs; they had a sealed fascia of metal with no discernible difference between head and body. Four of the mechs grabbed the frozen infiltration platforms and carried them easily.
‘Forty per cent. Still hasn’t found the overrides,’ GOD said. ‘You have me for five more minutes.’
‘Incoming,’ Ruth said to the workshop through the Party’s speakers, and the women quickly seated themselves and put their halos back on. They shared comparisons of blank looks, smiling as they competed to look more vacant.
Two of the Zhengs split off and headed to the workshop. The remaining four herded the hostages down the stairs into the basement.
‘Can you split your screen?’ the GOD asked.
‘Yes. Send me the MIP’s feed.’
The left side of the screen showed Ruth’s camera-infiltration feed, and she flipped to the workshop, where the women were sitting quietly waiting. GOD pushed the MIP’s view of the other Zhengs escorting the team down the green stairs and into the basement to the right side of her screen.
‘Did you tell the team that I’m here?’ Ruth asked. ‘They lost contact while we were in the corridor, and don’t know what happened after that.’
A message scrolled along the bottom of the MIP’s feed: ‘Don’t risk yourself, my love. Stay safe. Let me die if it means you can escape.’
‘Its love?’
‘It didn’t want to share exactly how broken it is, but it thinks it’s in love with you.’
‘We haven’t known each other long enough for it to claim it loves me. We’ve only known each other for a week and during that time it was pretending to be human.’
‘It knows. It says it was love at first sight.’
‘Really broken,’ Ruth said under her breath.
The Zhengs had arrived in the workshop.
‘Remain seated,’ one of the mechs said in the clone’s voice, but with a metallic overtone from the speaker. It approached the woman who had the smashed halo on the desk in front of her. It picked one of the pieces up in its claws, and wrapped the other claws around the woman’s neck. ‘You broke your equipment?’
‘The criminals broke it when we refused to go with them,’ the woman said, her voice hoarse with stress as the claws pressed against her throat. ‘They yelled at us when we refused to move, and one of them took my halo and smashed it.’ Her voice quivered. ‘They were terrifying, and the Party wasn’t here to protect us! Where was the Party?’
The Zheng lowered its claws. ‘The Party is the protector of all living things.’
‘And the Party is infallible,’ the woman squeaked.
‘Sufficient patriotic compliance,’ the Zheng said, and released her. ‘Remain here while we deal with the evil infiltrators who attempted to harm our precious unborn babies. We need to check the rest of the facility for traitors.’
The women hesitated.
‘Stay put, stay put,’ Ruth said to the screen. ‘Don’t fight back yet, you’ll ruin everything.’
Gaiheng glanced up at the cameras, then down at her desk. She remained seated without moving, then nodded.
The other women saw her do it and nodded as well, the signal passing along the production line.
‘I owe you a big dinner and the alcoholic drink of your choice,’ Ruth whispered at the screen.
‘Four minutes seventeen remaining,’ GOD said. ‘No hit on the failsafe codes.’
The two Zhengs locked the prisoners in the workshop then headed down the corridor, checking every room as they did. Ruth piled the cleaning rags over herself, hoping that it blocked her heat signature. The Zhengs were doing a thorough search of the facility’s rooms, and with any luck they’d ignore the locked riser cupboard.
Ruth heard the Zhengs stomping up the hallway and checking the room doors. They slammed the doors as they finished the individual rooms.
The door of the riser cupboard rattled, and Ruth huddled under her rags.
‘That area is secure,’ GOD said to the Zheng in the Party’s voice.
‘With honour I serve,’ the Zheng said, and moved away.
Ruth breathed again, switched to the MIP’s first-person feed and nearly shouted with horror. Cipan was lying on a hospital bed in the centre of the large cloning lab, connected to life-support systems and with multiple tubes coming out of her lower abdomen. Her eyes were wide and horrified, staring at the ceiling above the thick hose for the ventilator coming out of her mouth.
Dead, the MIP’s message said at the bottom of the image. I think we killed her when we disconnected the power and her life support went down.
Max dropped his hands from behind his head, ran to the end of Cipan’s gurney and bent over her.
‘I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,’ he said to her corpse, folded up with agony. ‘We couldn’t save you. To die like this …’
One of the mechs grabbed him and dragged him away from Cipan, still limp with shock.
‘Why didn’t I see this?’ Ruth whispered desperately. ‘There are cameras above her! Why couldn’t I tap into them and stop it?’
‘Separate circuit,’ GOD said. ‘I didn’t know the lab existed, it’s not on the plans. It’s hard-wired, it’s not on the wireless network.’ Its voice softened. ‘Sorry.’
‘Neither of these are useful as a replacement for the egg donor,’ one of the Zheng mechs said, waving a gun at Max and Cassie. ‘Both of them are male, even though one has had surgery to make him look like a woman.’
‘What about Ruth Sharpe? She’s paralysed and would be unable to escape.’
‘Pigmented,’ the other Zheng said with scorn.
‘We replace the contents of the eggs with superior material.’
‘Still too inferior to be useful as anything but an incubator.’
‘Isn’t this Zheng the Revolutionary Hero?’ another clone asked, standing behind Zheng.
‘Are you questioning the Party?’ the first clone said.
The mechs were quiet, then said in unison, ‘With honour we serve,’ and herded the captives to the end of the lab, past the cloning equipment and microscopes, to small cages a metre to a side that sat at the end next to a lift that probably led to a hidden exit. They had to drag Max, as he was limp with despair. They pushed Max and Cassie into the cages, and they sat in the bottom, unable to stand upright. Max folded over and buried his head in his knees, his shoulders shaking as he wept.
‘The Party’s speaking to the clones through the lab’s internal wi-fi and I have no access to it,’ the GOD said.
The mechs herded the MIP and Zheng to a separate area containing six frames that looked like charging stations for the Zheng mechs. They piled the four frozen platforms in a corner, then turned on a standard robotics analysis-and-tuning table. It looked like an autopsy table and had lights around its edges and arms that telescoped from its sides.
‘Can you break into the Party’s feed?’ Ruth whispered.
‘I’m trying, but the lab has a limited-range wi-fi signal that is within it only. The MIP is trying to break in from the inside, but the signal is heavily encrypted. Three minutes thirty.’
‘Shit,’ Ruth said under her breath.
One of the Zhengs grabbed the MIP by the arm, hard enough to dent its casing, and held it. The other three worked together; two lifted Zheng by the shoulders and the third ripped Zheng’s legs off one at a time, then removed Zheng’s arms and head. They turned to Theo and Ruth forced herself not to look away as they performed the same process on it, appearing even more disturbing from the MIP’s viewpoint. The MIP’s feed went black.
‘That didn’t destroy either of them, it will just disable them and ensure that they can’t see to run,’ GOD said. ‘The MIP’s processor is in its chest, and it is still trying to break into the lab’s wi-fi. Two minutes fifty.’
‘At one minute, download the algorithm back onto my nano and I’ll complete the override search from here,’ Ruth said. She looked around for the taser, hit the switch and checked that it sparked. The little room filled with the smell of ozone. ‘I’m ready for you, patriots.’
‘I can put a virus into the facility servers before I go …’
‘No, that would delete the override before I can find it.’
‘The MIP asks me to present you with the option of running to the truck and getting the hell out of there before the systems are back up.’
‘The MIP should know me better than that. The guards at the gate would stop me anyway.’
‘One minute. I’m downloading the remaining search onto your nano. The MIP says it loves you. Good luck, Dr Sharpe, I will be overhead again in four hours and twelve minutes and I sincerely hope that you are all free when I am.’
Ruth watched the seconds count down as her algorithm picked up the search on the nano. Eighty per cent of the files were already covered, and she refused to consider the possibility that there wasn’t an override. The Party never trusted anyone, so the code had to be there.