Chapter Thirty
Kari worked frantically to get her code in place. She slammed down line after line, using her development environment to help her produce code in record time.
“Three minutes left,” Dot said.
She wanted to shout at him that she needed more time, but she knew there was no way to extend the clock. She flipped back to the simulation and added more code to her mechs. She wasn’t allowed to alter the mechs; she was only allowed to change the code they used to decide what actions to take in the contest.
Kari knew she didn’t have time to start from scratch, so she took the default behavior and modified it. She was in the groove, where code flowed from her mind chip slower than her brain could think of what steps she needed to take. She knew exactly what she needed to do and in what order. She layered actions on top of actions, giving the mech more instructions on what to do when it reached certain criteria. It wasn’t the best code she had ever written, but she was proud of it.
It’s good enough to trash Motorcad if he were playing. And that’s saying something. Maybe I’ll have a fighting chance against this mad scientist.
“One minute,” Dot announced.
She switched back to her development environment, leaving the simulation behind.
I can’t afford to lose the game, but I also can’t afford to ignore this code, either!
Back in her development environment, she dived back into her code.
Hopefully they haven’t changed too much about this place since I was last here. And hopefully they are using custom specifications . . .
She searched through data, careful not to expose what she was really working on.
If they find me out, it’s game over. And I’m not talking about the simulation.
“There is no more time,” Dot said.
Kari sighed and let half of her vision return to the real world while she continued to code in the background. She wasn’t as effective if she was forced to multitask, but even a little bit of progress would add up.
“Well, let’s see what you’re worth, Freelancer,” Adrian said, once again doing as much as he could to make her hacker handle sound like the world’s biggest joke.
“Good luck,” Kari said, trying to sound confident.
“You got this, Kari,” David said.
The game started without Kari needing to do anything. She invited Dot, David, and Fai to the simulation. Everyone had the same viewing rights, which allowed them to see everything in the simulation. Since they weren’t allowed to give orders to the mechs in this particular version of the capture the flag, it was now truly a spectator’s sport. Except Kari didn’t watch the simulation, she went back to work.
“My early assessment would give you a significant chance at winning this game,” Dot said to his so-called father.
“I would expect that probability to increase exponentially in a matter of seconds,” Adrian said confidently.
Kari drew on years of experience now, feeling what she needed to do by instinct. A hundred thousand failed hacks, millions of lines of code, and countless sleepless nights aided her now, guiding her on what to do.
“Dang,” David said.
“I now calculate your probability of victory to be upward of ninety-five percent,” Dot said.
“You underestimate her,” Fai said.
“Do we not share the same access to advanced computation?” Dot asked.
“I’m being optimistic,” Fai said.
“It is clear your friend is overmatched and misguided. She’s already down a mech, this won’t last long,” Adrian said.
I lost a mech already? They were supposed to last longer than that!
Kari pushed the thought aside and focused on her code. She searched through all the connected devices in the lab, searching for the one device she needed to find.
The one thing that can solve this puzzle.
“Ha! This is hardly a match,” Adrian said.
“I hope that your third mech has something special up its sleeves,” David said. His voice cracked a little as he spoke. He was terrified.
And for good reason, we’re as good as dead if I lose that last mech. I won’t. I won’t fail you, David.
“Oh!” David shouted. “That’s more like it!”
“An interesting development,” Dot said. “Although I don’t calculate any real changes in the likelihood of the outcome.”
“You have lots to learn, brother,” Fai said.
There it is! Now I just need to make sure this works . . .
“Bah!” Adrian said. “You run like a scared little hacker girl. You can’t help but give your creations the same cowardice your kind is known for. Hiding in the shadows, tearing down the work of people who actually contribute to society.”
“I don’t think a cave troll can complain about hiding in shadows,” Kari said.
“What did you call me, girl?”
“That’s what John and Christina called you,” Kari said. “Did you not know?”
She fought the urge to taunt him further and instead finished the final bits of the code she needed to save their lives.
OK, Fai, we’re only going to get one shot at this.
Kari sent David a quick message telling him to get ready to duck. If everything went to plan, he wouldn’t need to, but she had to warn him just in case. She stepped forward, hoping Adrian would refocus his gun on her instead, but he just growled and kept his gun focused on David.
“Call me what you want,” Adrian said. “This little game will be over in a moment. And then we’ll see how you run your mouth.”
It’s now or never.
“This isn’t looking good . . .” David said.
Kari executed her code, unleashing her attack on the center of the communication bubble. It hit the communication bubble in an instant, ripping the specialized device out from under Adrian and Dot’s control.
You can win the game and you might be able to protect the entire facility, but this little piece of hardware isn’t connected to everything else, is it, Adrian?
She overloaded the communication bubble, destroying the device’s capability to block all forms of digital communication in the area from communication with the outside world. The research lab was reconnected to the internet in a split-second.
“The communication bubble is down!” Dot said.
“Fai, connect to the cloud for more processing power!” Kari shouted. “Overwhelm him!”
“You little—” Adrian’s voice was drowned out by the energy blast escaping his gun. Kari dove out of the way, hoping that the blast was coming for her. She heard it burn through the ground on the other side of the room in the same area that she heard David’s screams come from.
Kari screamed on the inside. She landed on the floor and it knocked the air out of her lungs.
David!
“I’m going to kill you all!” Adrian shouted.
Kari looked up to see Adrian’s eyes fixated on her; he moved his gun toward her in slow motion. The drones floating outside were about to unleash energy blasts as well, all of them now trained on her. David continued to scream in pain on the other side of the room.
Dot’s lights vanished and the rest of the research lab went dark. Kari forced herself to roll over again and Adrian’s energy blast tore through the dark lab room heading for where she had just been. She felt the heat and slight change in tension on her scalp as it burned through her hair, missing her head by inches.
“David!” Kari screamed as soon as she was able to find some breath.
A thump came from the far side of the room near Adrian’s desk and it was followed by a thud. The lights came back on in the facility a split-second later, revealing Fai’s worn body standing over Adrian. His crumpled frame was bleeding slightly from the head. Fai kicked the energy rifle away from him, and Kari raced over to David.
David was rolling on the ground in pain, his arms were trying to hold his leg in a position that wouldn’t hurt, but there was nothing he could do stop the pain. His right foot from the calf down had been burned away by Adrian’s energy blast. The wound was sealed by the nature of the attack, but David was clearly in shock.
Kari felt dizzy as she looked at her boyfriend. She eased herself to the ground next to him, to comfort him and because she didn’t have any strength left to stand.
“David, I’m so, so sorry . . .” She was crying, and her vision was blurry.
His arm reached out and found her. She grabbed hold of it and they met in the middle. Kari clutched David as she squeezed her tightly.
“There should be medical supplies located in the supply room,” Fai said as she dashed from the room. “I’ll be back.”
“Kari. Kari . . .” David repeated as he held her.
“I’m right here, David . . . it’s going to be all right. We’re going to be fine,” Kari said, assuring herself as much as she was comforting him.
“Did we get him?”
“Yes,” Kari said. “We got him.”
“The officials will be here in a few minutes,” Fai said. “They have almost cleared through the wreckage in the tunnel.”
“Good,” Kari said. She was sitting on the bench in the lobby next to David, who floated, unconscious, on top of the stretcher she had printed for him.
“I detect that you are unsatisfied with our results today,” Fai said.
“My boyfriend lost half his leg,” Kari said. “So yeah, there is a little to be desired with how today went.”
“He knew what he was getting into,” Fai said. “He chose to come with us.”
“I know . . . it doesn’t make me feel any better.”
“In a way, you saved his life,” Fai said. “If we hadn’t taken control of everything connected to the network, including those drones, then they would have finished us all off.”
“I know,” Kari said.
She glanced over to where Adrian’s limp body rested on the other side of the room. He hadn’t woken up yet, but Fai assured her that he would be fine. She was almost upset to hear it. Part of her wished he were dead.
He deserves to face the courts, though. The families of the people he killed deserve that as well.
“We need to talk about Dot,” Fai said.
“I know,” Kari said. “He wasn’t created the right way. He’s illegal. If they find him, they will probably destroy his CB. It’s the law.”
“So what do you want to do?” Fai asked.
“You know the path forward already, Fai,” Kari said. “You don’t need my permission.”
“But do I have your blessing?” Fai asked.
“Yes,” Kari said. “Take him with you. Teach him well.”
“I only hope that I can be as good of a teacher as you have been to your students,” Fai said. “And to me.”
“You’ll be better. I don’t have any doubts about that.”
“I’ll do my best. And I’ll keep him safe.”
“Be sure to visit sometimes, OK?”
“I fear that bringing him around the Academy would cause unnecessary risk to your students.”
“Well you better call at least,” Kari said. “My parents are going to want updates about how you are doing.”
“Of course. I shouldn’t be here when they arrive,” Fai said. “It would complicate things.”
“I ordered the printers to print you a new body. Version three. Also a carrying case for Dot’s CB.”
“I know, I saw the requests,” Fai said.
Another surprise ruined . . .
“I made one slight change, though,” Fai said.
“Yeah?”
“I changed it back to version two. It may not be our best work, but I feel at home in it. I experienced the world in this version.”
Kari smiled at Fai, who moved in and gave her a gentle hug with her broken body.
“Be safe,” Kari said.
“You too, Kari Tahe. Thank you for everything, my friend.”
“I thought we were sisters,” Kari said.
“You’re right. That is the more precise term for our relationship.”
Fai disappeared back into the research lab just as the flashing lights of response vehicles shined through the glass lobby’s walls.
Chapter Thirty-One
“And it worked?” David asked.
“Yeah, it did,” Kari said. “As soon as I brought down the communication bubble, Fai was able to draw more processing power in the cloud to try to secure the facility. Dot had no choice but to try to match Fai’s processing power. And when he connected to more servers in the cloud, he eventually ran into Fai’s worm. Then boom, Fai had control over everything Dot had owned before. She basically shut him down.”
“And then I got shot.”
“Yeah . . . and then you got shot.”
“That all happened really, really fast,” David said.
“They’re extremely powerful,” Kari said. “They’re young still, but they are on an entirely different level than we are. It might have been a blink of an eye to us, but to them it was enough time to stage a pretty epic battle.”
“Not as epic as getting shot . . .” David said.
He was getting sleepy, so she held his hand as he fell asleep again. She rubbed it gently while she tried to get some rest herself.
A knock on the door to David’s hospital room kept her from dozing off. She knew she needed sleep, but the hospital chairs were not comfortable, and the enforcement guards outside of the room wouldn’t let her leave unless she was going to prison.
“Come in,” Kari said.
“What?” David said. “Kari?”
“I’m right here, David,” Kari said.
She was already upset at whoever was at the door because they had woken David up. He hadn’t taken his first hours of being awake without a foot well. The only thing that seemed to console him was that Kari promised to design him the world’s greatest prosthetic foot. After that, he had been in and out of sleep pretty frequently. The doctors said he needed some continual rest and so far he hadn’t been able to get any.
Marshal Henderson stepped into the room. Thankfully he didn’t wear the infuriating grin as he entered.
“Do we have to do this right now?” Kari asked.
“I’m afraid that we do,” Henderson said. “You have a way of slipping out of my control if I leave you alone for even the slightest amount of time.”
“He’s making my foot hurt worse,” David said.
You don’t have that foot anymore . . .
“My apologies, Mr. Pratt. You may not believe this, but I am happy that the doctors have informed me that you are doing well.”
“I don’t believe you,” David said.
Henderson frowned, but continued anyway.
“You know, I’ve never seen you two together, despite our long history together. It reminds me—”
“No one cares,” Kari said.
David squeezed her hand in agreement.
“Right. Despite your present state, I am going to need you to hand over your processing units. Miss Tahe, control over your case as been reassigned from local enforcement to my personal care.”
“Perfect,” David said.
Henderson raised his eyebrows.
“We had a deal,” Kari said. “You wanted graphium proof that Christina was involved in the Vision massacre, and we have it.”
“Do you now?” Henderson stepped forward.
“Yes. Adrian, the man who was arrested with us, he’s technically the man behind everything. Christina told him to figure out a way to break the Great Agreement and his only solution was to kill John, everyone else, and fake his own death so he could work in peace. He told Christina later and she was down with it.”
“He is your proof?”
“We recorded it. We also have various biometric readings to confirm the report,” Kari said. “That should be more than enough to take care of Adrian as well as Christina for a long, long time. You’ll be a national hero.”
“Can you send this to me?” Henderson asked.
“Done,” Kari said. She sent him a copy of all the data he would need to arrest Christina and prosecute Adrian. “You might want to make sure to keep a close eye on Adrian. He’s smart and a mass murderer. Don’t try to turn him into your next Tara, though. He’ll murder you rather than just leave you behind with a broken heart.”
“Exceptional work,” Henderson said. “I’m quite pleased.”
“And your end of the deal?” David asked. He sat up taller in his bed, doing his best to look tough while in a hospital gown.
“I said I would consider a pardon,” Henderson said. “But that was before you helped Tara escape and assaulted the air force base. I’m afraid it’ll take some time for me deliberate on what to do.”
Kari sighed.
I’m so done with you, Henderson.
“Can we have a private moment to deliberate ourselves?” David asked.
“No.”
“Fair enough, we’ll just pretend like you don’t exist for a minute,” David said.
“I do that all the time,” Kari said. “It’s the times I have to pretend he does exist that bother me.”
“I was hoping to talk to you about this at a better time, but this will have to do,” David said. “You know my major, right?”
“Yes.”
“And you know how I was back home when we had that run-in with Henderson’s people?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I never told you what I was doing there. The truth is that I was working on my capstone project. It’s actually the only thing I have been working on this entire semester. But I actually started working on it long before that.”
“I wondered what you were doing back home . . .”
“Yeah. Anyway, my project has been compiling data to present a strong public case that Freelancer has been wrongfully blamed for a number of high-profile incidents, unfairly targeted by government officials, and also done immeasurable good for society. I need to add in the final bits about bringing justice to Adrian, but I’ll get there.”
“Bah!” Henderson said. “Some student documentary isn’t going to change a thing.”
“I also need to add the parts where I have video evidence of a certain high-ranking government official acknowledging a few of his wrongdoings, breaking deals, and being a general dirtbag,” David said.
“Don’t be a fool—”
“I have testimonials from people he targeted, people who worked for him, and a hundred other first-hand testimonies. I haven’t earned my degree yet, but I think it’s highly likely, at the very least, that it will change the public’s opinion on you. Maybe reopen the case of Freelancer.”
“Do you really think I can be threatened by you?” Henderson asked.
“Parts of the documentary are personal, so I wanted your permission before I released it.”
“Permission granted,” Kari said.
“Done,” David said. “Wow. That feels good.”
“What does?”
“That was my capstone project. I’m all finished with college now.”
“I have heard enough! You two little monsters are—”
“Careful, Marshal,” Kari said. “You’re still on camera.”
“I don’t care who sees, I’m going—”
A beeping noise sounded and Henderson stopped in confusion.
“What’s that?” Henderson asked.
The door to the back of the room opened, and a nurse stepped inside.
“Nurse, this man is threatening my safety,” David said. “Can you please have him removed from our room?”
“Sir!” she said.
“It’s OK! I’m Marshal Henderson, I have full authority over the custody and prosecution of these two war criminals and—”
“Might I remind you this is a hospital!” the nurse said. “You are to leave this room this instant. I don’t care who you are, you can prosecute them once they are out of my care!”
“What about her! She’s—”
“I’m his wife,” Kari said. “Power of attorney and all.”
It had only taken her a few minutes to hack the hospital’s records and alter them to show that she was David’s wife. She’d make sure they were corrected before she left, but for now it allowed her to stay with him.
“Don’t think this is—”
“Sir!” The nurse ushered him out of the room while Henderson fumed.
“Wow! This is really going viral already!” David said, loud enough for Henderson to hear.
The nurse forced Henderson from the room and left them alone again. Kari squeezed David’s hand and he pulled her over the bed to give him a kiss.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you . . .” David said.
“It’s probably better you didn’t,” Kari said. “I’m not sure I would have approved of it.”
“That was my worry . . . you’re always busy fighting important battles, taking care of other people. I might not be able to hack with you, or do much more besides take an energy blast in the leg, but I wanted to do this for you. I was going to bring it up sooner, but then the attacks set things back.”
“That means a lot, David,” Kari said.
“You mean a lot to me.”
She kissed him again before settling back in her seat.
“Can I watch it?”
“Sure,” David said. “Just don’t be too critical. I’ve already lost a foot; I can’t afford to lose what’s left of my pride as well.”
Kari laughed and settled into her chair while she watched David’s documentary. He wove a narrative, walking the audience through much of Kari’s life and the events that made Freelancer a household name.
Thomas talked about Kari being a student who always showed incredible promise. Sarah testified that Kari and her had never gotten along, but that she didn’t believe Kari could be a terrorist. The Pratt family appeared early and often, explaining the events that happened at the outbreak of the Civil War. Mr. Pratt himself appeared tearful on a number of occasions, talking about how much Kari had done for his family. Udarh even testified from behind bars in a high-security prison. He gave a moving testimonial on Henderson’s actions and Kari’s innocence.
Aubrey was dressed up in fancy clothes and had obviously spent a lot of time on her makeup and lighting, but she spoke about how Kari had changed her life after she was wrongfully imprisoned.
Motorcad described the events that had occurred at Valhalla and how she had brought down the Unseen almost single-handedly. David had recorded video from the event. She watched as he followed Lars up the steps to save her life and how they drove away in a manual truck to escape the nanobots and the eventual explosion.
The last part of the documentary was not as polished as the previous parts. It was filled with testimonials of students from the Academy and Fai. Her parents even appeared briefly in the video from their flat in London.
Kari cried through the whole thing, but nothing moved her as much as David’s heartfelt plea at the end of the video for people to open their minds and examine the data he had gathered.
“David . . .”
“That bad?”
“No . . . I—I’ve never seen anything so moving in my life. Thank you, so, so much. It was beautiful.”
“You think so?”
“I could never have done something like that . . . I mean, if that doesn’t get you a degree, I don’t know what will.”
“Well, that was what it was all about,” David said.
“I don’t believe you,” Kari said.
“Well, I’m just happy that I got my parents testimonials when I did.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because my dad is really going to hate you when he finds out that you got my leg shot off.”