Ancient Evil (The First Genocide Book 1) (7 page)

The one who was Guest spoke. “It looks like
he has arrived. I expected him to rank higher than Ten.”

The one who was Host looked at him and
spoke directly into his mind.

Zabab –> Donta:
Why must you speak
aloud, Donta? How did you rise so high with such terrible manners?

“I rose through my prowess on the field and
my ability to slay the Feral, as you well know. We may be observed. Your kind
can more easily pluck thoughts out of the ether than our words out of the air.”
Donta smiled. “And I know how it annoys you, my dear Zabab.”

Zabab –> Donta:
Fine, verbalize like
an animal if you wish. You really think he is the one we have been waiting for?

“I do, his pedigree, his strength and his
character are exactly what we have been waiting for.”

Zabab –> Donta:
You are sure it is
him, not one of his brothers?

“Pah. The older one is too cruel and the
younger too meek.”

Zabab –> Donta:
I think this one is
not cruel enough. Will he be able to do what needs doing?

“My dear, Zabab, that is what we are here
for, to mold the minds of the young. We will make him strong, cunning, quick
and, yes, cruel as well. If we can’t we will break his mind and reassemble it
however we please. We are his teachers for Ancestors’ sake. You saw what he did
down there. I have been monitoring him; that other boy was like a brother to
him. If something stands in his way, he will sweep it away, just as he did to
his childhood friend.”

Zabab –> Donta:
I suppose he did show
some mettle. There is much at stake.

“Unlike you, I needed to be bold to reach
my position; I was not born to it. We need boldness now if we are to prevail.
When the time comes for us to rebuild from the ashes, I will take your council,
but for now you must take mine so we can burn it down.”

Zabab –> Donta:
Agreed.

For now
, Zabab thought to himself.

A
female voice with a slight Welsh accent woke him. “Call coming in from Lindsay
MacDonald,” the voice said.

He sat up. He should take the call; Lindsay
was his executive assistant.

“Answer,” he said, then after a slight
pause, “Morning, Lindsay.”

“Good morning, Mr. Alexander. I thought I
would call, as I did not see you online. Is everything OK?” She sounded
concerned.

“Yes, Lindsay, just a bit of a rough night.”

“Rough? Are you sure you’re OK? Should I
send someone round?” Like all competent executive assistants, she was very
protective of her employer.

“No, no, I am fine. Really.”

“Well, if you say so,” she said, but he
could still hear worry in her voice, mixed in with a little doubt. “I’ll have
some croissants and coffee delivered in a few minutes.”

“Thank you, that would be marvelous. What
do I have on the docket for today?”

“Today is fairly clear. The results of the
latest prototypes have been sent to you. It looks promising. There is a forty
five percent increase in responsiveness.”

“Forty five, hmm, I was hoping for more.
I’ll review it and go through the specs again.”

“You also have a meeting with Blacksun to
discuss the five-year roadmap. I’ve posted the latest version of the report for
your review. Could you let me know if you have any updates by noon, so I can
incorporate them in the version I distribute to them?”

“I am sure it is fine, but I will take a
peek. They should be happy. I expect we will be able to roll out the new line
of prosthetics in the first quarter of next year. We just need to solve the
responsiveness issue with the new sensors.”

“I am sure you will, Mr. Alexander. You
always do.”

“Oh stop, Lindsay, we are all part of
CySen, all part of the team.”

“If you say so, Mr. Alexander.” He could
hear the smile in her voice. He had founded the company and the majority of the
patents were in his name. Without him there would be no CySen.

“I better get working. I’ll look at the
presentation for Blacksun first.”

“Thank you, Mr. Alexander. Let me know if
you need anything.”

“Will do, bye.” He paused for a couple of
seconds and then said, “End call.”

He reached for his mobile phone on the
nightstand and checked the custom app that monitored the power levels of his
leg and arm. They were still only seventy percent charged, a testament to the
drain his evening activities had taken. The Taser was linked into the batteries
that powered his arms and legs.

He would need to design some new wires that
could take the amperage delivered by his Taser. Last night, the wires had
melted while delivering the current to his newest subject, luckily after she
lost consciousness. If the wires had failed slightly earlier he would not have
woken up this morning. He couldn’t just increase the gauge of the wire. The
wires needed to be lightweight enough to stow in the compartment in his left
hand. The range of the weapon would also decrease as the weight of the wires
increased. Ah well, a problem for another day; his day job was calling. He did
not anticipate needing the Taser anytime soon; his newest subject was the one
he had been waiting for.

He logged into his laptop and pulled up the
product roadmap that he had been working on for Blacksun.

Blacksun was the venture capital firm that
had bankrolled his little start-up twenty years earlier. The first few years
had been tough. He had not minded the long hours; he knew he would personally
reap the rewards of any technological advances he made, as well as the wealth
that would allow him to withdraw from the rest of humanity.

As he became more successful, he was able
build his current home and was able to deal with people remotely more often. He
had completely gutted the building on Johnson Terrace and had it rebuilt so
that he could be effective. The cutting edge communications equipment in his
office made him completely accessible and also allowed him to monitor
everything that was going on in his main R&D plant located on the outskirts
of the city. CySen, short for Cyber Sensors, now employed close to five hundred
employees and his product, prosthetics, had made a difference in the lives of
hundreds of thousands of amputees around the world.

“There is someone at the door.” The voice
came from a speaker hidden in the ceiling above his desk. There were speakers
in every room that his home system used to alert him to people at the door,
people trying to reach him on the phone or even to remind him that it was time
to eat or sleep — when he struggled to resolve a problem he tended to lose
track of time and his surroundings. He had given his house system a voice that
he could not ignore.

He picked up his phone and checked the feed
from the cameras that covered the area of street outside his front door. The coffee
and croissants had arrived. He buzzed the delivery boy through his outer door
and watched him leave the package in front of his inner door and leave. He
waited for the outer door to close and lock before he made his way down to
collect his breakfast.

Lindsay had done a great job on sexing up
the roadmap document for Blacksun with images and some discreet animations.
That is not to say he did not have comments; he always had comments. If he sent
back something to his staff without comments, they would probably think he had
not read it.

After sending off his feedback he went down
to his main lab in the basement of the building to see if he could make some
progress on the prototype sensors that were the keystone of his newest line of
prosthetics.

After his body had been broken he had become
brutally aware of the need for major improvements in the functioning of
prosthetics. They were difficult to use and had a large learning curve. He
wanted to make them more natural, and to do that he needed to work on the
interface, the way that they were controlled.

His first line of devices had
revolutionized the industry. He had developed sensors that picked up nerve
impulses directly from the point of contact that the prosthetic was attached
to. He was able to cut down the training time for a new limb from months to
weeks.

His new line, if he could get it to work,
would be a world changer. He needed to focus on making it work, but his new
side project was calling to him as well. If he made progress on the prototype
he would reward himself with some time on the side project in Lab B. Who knew? Maybe
his two projects would intersect and complement each other.

“Time to prepare for your meeting, Mr.
Alexander,” his house system said.

He looked up from his screen and checked
his phone. He had about half an hour before the car Lindsay had arranged
arrived to take him to the meeting with Blacksun. Their offices were on George
Street, a short ten-minute journey from his home.

This face-to-face meeting was very unusual.
Both he and the VC firm were firm believers in the importance of privacy. Of
course, he had researched them when they first approached him, but not many
hard facts turned up. They were rumored to be involved in emerging markets and
they had connections with various mercenary groups that helped them to shape
foreign policy in the aforementioned emerging markets. They were no angel
investors; it was more like dealing with the devil. Then again, he was no angel
either.

They had sought him out shortly after he
got out of the hospital and only a month after he started to explore the
shortfalls of the prosthetics that were available at the time. They convinced
him to abandon academia and start his own firm. He was grateful that they were
able to help him; without their funds he would have needed to constantly fight
for funding from donors in the academic system. With their initial managerial
support and funds he had been able to devote much more of his time to developing
his ideas. It also allowed him the opportunity to pursue other side projects that
would not be possible in a university setting.

Being grateful did not mean that he trusted
them. Quite the contrary; their opaque nature and the fact that they had sought
him out just made him more cautious.

The grey stone building looked like all the
others on the street. There was a simple plaque on the wall reading “Blacksun.”
The logo under the company name depicted two circles, one inside the other,
that were joined by a series of twelve lightning bolts radiating from a central
point. There was no description of what they did. The assumption was that they
called you, you did not call them.

The drive had taken longer than expected.
The Festival had just started and the Fringe had clogged the street with
jugglers, fire eaters, comedians, general weirdoes and the crowds that flocked
from all over the world to gawk at them. It was supposed to be a Festival of
the Arts, but the Fringe had eclipsed the Festival itself long ago.

As he got out of the car, the building’s
heavy wooden door opened. It was a serious door, practically medieval, and thick
planks were bound with thicker beams and black iron rivets. The door was opened
by a large — no, make that fucking huge — man in a black suit wearing
sunglasses. The sunglasses were purely for show, as he emerged from a shadowed
hallway into an overcast day.

The giant held the door open and ushered
him past the stairs into a small elevator and pressed the button for the third
floor.

When the elevator door pinged open his
escort led him through double glass doors and past a receptionist to a
conference room with seating for twelve. The two people sitting at the table
rose as he entered. One he knew. She was an attractive woman just the wrong
side of forty in a smart business suit that probably cost the same as a small
car. Her name was Wendy and he thought of her as his handler. She claimed to be
his Client Manager or Account Manager or something similar, but he knew she
considered herself his handler as well. The other person in the room was a
generic grey-haired suit.

“Thank you,” he said to his escort as he
left.

“Thank you for meeting with us in person,
Mr. Alexander. I know you prefer otherwise.” Wendy stepped forward to shake his
hand.

He ignored her hand and limped over to one
of the seats and settled in. “Yes, that is true, but I can hardly complain of a
ten-minute journey, now can I?”

“Of course,” she said with a smile, “that’s
why we obtained these offices.” She turned to the suit. “This is Henry.”

“Hello, Henry. I assume you know who I am
or you wouldn’t be in this meeting. I don’t mean to be rude, but can we cut to
the chase here? I would really like to get back to my lab. I feel we are very
close to achieving a breakthrough on the new line. I assume that you had
questions on the roadmap we provided, although I’m not certain why we needed to
meet in person.”

“Yes, the roadmap was good, very good; it
exceeded our expectations.” Henry leaned forward a little as he spoke. “Tell me,
do you really think your next generation of sensors will be able to do all you
say?”

“I’ll not take offence, Henry, since we
just met. I always deliver, always. Wendy should have briefed you.”

“Oh, she didn’t need to brief me. You see,
I have followed your work quite closely through the years, even though we’ve
never met.” From the way Henry was taking charge of the conversation, it seemed
that he was Wendy’s superior. He was a very big dick indeed, Wendy was a
Partner at Blacksun, which was no trivial achievement. “Your idea to use your
sensors to read someone’s thoughts was fascinating, but also, if I may say, a
little fantastical. I needed to talk to you myself.”

He was getting a little uncomfortable in
the swivel chair. His chair at home had been specially built for his rather
unique physiology. “The sensors will not actually read thoughts, but rather
motor impulses. The sensors will just be an order of magnitude more sensitive
than the existing sensors. Instead of picking up a single set of nerve impulses
from the point of contact where the prosthetic meets the flesh, they will
detect the electrical patterns directly from the brain as it processes. Other
than the sensitivity issue, the trick bit will be the calibration and the
software to interpret the impulses. I plan to use a more complex variant of the
self-learning software that we used to calibrate my previous lines of
prosthetics. First, however, I need to solve the sensitivity issue, or lack
thereof.”

“The implications are huge –”

“Of course they are. We could allow a
paraplegic to control an exoskeleton that would help them move their limbs. We
may eventually be able to pick up the language impulses for those who lost the
ability to speak.”

“Correct me if I am wrong, but could they
also be used to pass information silently or fly a drone or even, shall we say,
assist with an interrogation?”

He looked from Henry to Wendy. “You know,
whenever I forget what truly evil bastards you are, you do something to remind
me.”

Wendy had the decency to pretend to be
embarrassed. Henry just waited for him to answer the question. He did not
oblige.