Authors: Kyra Anderson
Isa glanced at the one in her hand.
“Well, certainly not this one,” she
laughed.
Kailynn looked over Isa’s relaxed face,
still finding herself enthralled in everything about the Golden Elite.
However, she was too curious to keep the
words from bubbling out of her mouth.
“Was Remus a good partner?”
Isa’s face became confused.
“How do you mean?”
Kailynn sighed, tossing the toy aside and
resting her body atop Isa’s, folding her hands over Isa’s belly and resting her
chin on them. Isa folded an arm under her head to look at the Significant,
puzzled.
“Was he good to you?”
Isa was silent and still for two long
seconds. She finally sighed and looked away, pursing her lips.
“Remus has, and always will, support me
and protect me to the best of his ability.”
“That doesn’t answer the question,”
Kailynn pressed.
“Why are you so interested?” Isa evaded.
“I keep hearing about how horrible things
were five years ago, but no one ever tells me what happened,” Kailynn said. She
could feel Isa’s body tense under her, though the Elite’s face remained stoic.
“I’m not going to ask you to tell me unless you
want
to tell me, but I’m trying to understand how that changed you.
Why it changed everything so much, including your relationship with him. I’m
trying to figure things out.”
Isa sighed heavily and lifted a hand,
rubbing it over Kailynn’s shoulder tenderly.
“What happened five years ago…” she
started slowly, “was extremely difficult, for everyone. I was not the only one
changed. Remus has never been the same, neither has Rayal. Every Elite in the
Syndicate changed to some degree.” Isa closed her eyes and moved her arm back
to her side, letting her head fall back to the bed. “If you want to know how it
changed
me
…”
Isa hesitated.
“Getting the medical center approved in
Trid is something I have wanted since coming to power,” she explained. “I
always wanted to grant citizenship to Trids and integrate the district into the
rest of the planet. For years, I fought against Venus, though she would hear
nothing of it. I wanted to do so many things for this planet, and its people,
but I had a very large, corrupt mess to clean up when I first came to power.
Then, about six years ago, almost seven, I started to gain some ground on
cleaning the planet up as I wanted.”
The Golden Elite fell silent for several
long moments.
“But five years ago…when…” Isa took a
deep breath, “when everything happened, I felt like I was the least powerful
being in the universe. It felt like everything I was, everything I believed
in…was all taken from me. I didn’t know who I was…there are many days I still
don’t know.”
Kailynn heard the pain in Isa’s voice and
lifted her head, shifting to crawl up the Elite’s body so that her face was
even with the Elite’s.
“The hospital is approved in the Walking
District,” Kailynn said quietly, trying to cheer the Elite up. “It was
something you always wanted, right?”
“It was,” Isa agreed. “But I did not
think I had the strength to fight for it.”
“Clearly you did,” Kailynn chuckled
lightly.
Isa smiled, one hand going up to
Kailynn’s face and brushing her cheek.
“I have you to thank for that.”
Kailynn could only stare at the Elite,
trying to figure out how to respond. She was too shocked to think of any words.
She was not sure how she felt about the words, either. It was a strange mixture
of surprise, embarrassment, and happiness.
Rather than speak, she leaned in for a
long, lingering kiss.
Umana had only been in service of Bronze
Elite Maki for seven months. He was still in training under Tauren, Maki’s
retiring caretaker, and even though he knew everything there was to know about
caring for an Elite, he was still nervous whenever Elite Maki was around.
His anxiety doubled when any other Elite
came to visit.
Therefore, when Tauren was out of the
house running errands, and Elite Chronus showed up, Umana was a trembling mess
as he opened the door.
He bowed his head deeply.
“Good morning, Elite Chronus,” he
half-mumbled, his voice breaking at the end of the sentence.
“Good morning.”
Umana stared at the brown-haired,
blue-eyed Elite for three, very long seconds before he remembered that he
needed to step out of the way and let in the Elite.
He hurriedly stepped aside and Elite
Chronus entered, the door shutting automatically behind him. Chronus turned his
strong eyes onto Umana, who flinched away, trying to still his shaking.
“I’ll be right back,” he said quickly,
keeping his head down and darting into the house, trying to remember where he
had last seen Elite Maki.
Chronus sighed and resisted the urge to
roll his eyes.
He was not sure how he always managed to
make Maki’s new caretaker so nervous.
Chronus walked further in, looking around
the pristine condition of the living room. Through the open door off the living
room, Chronus could see the Maki’s personal NCB chair.
What confused Chronus was the severe
state of disarray in Maki’s office. The chair stood untouched in the middle of
the room, but around it were books and files and parts of computers scattered
on the floor and desk.
Chronus stood in the doorway, looking over
the mess, confused.
His office in the Syndicate Building was
across from Maki’s. He could often see the other Bronze Elite working through
the glass walls. Maki was notoriously neat. He did not like things to be
disorganized. He had been that way in school and had carried the habit with him
into his time at the Syndicate.
Seeing the other Elite’s office so
disheveled alarmed Chronus.
“Looks like a bomb went off, doesn’t it?”
Chronus whirled around, startled. Maki
was behind him, smiling at the other Elite’s surprise.
“You startled me.”
“Sorry about that,” Maki said with a
teasing laugh. “What did you see in there that had you so focused?”
“Nothing,” Chronus said. “It’s just a
mess in there.”
“I know,” Maki said with a sigh. “I’ll
get to it eventually.”
The words sat uneasily with Chronus.
Decades of knowing Maki would have told him that Maki should have been upset
about the mess in his office.
“What brings you here today?”
Chronus reached into his pocket and
pulled out a removable drive.
“I ran a few more tests on the power
management program in Isa’s old NCB chair. I thought you might find some of
this interesting.”
“Oh,” Maki said, taking the drive out of
Chronus’ hand and walking into the office. “Let’s take a look, then.”
Chronus followed Maki into the office,
his eyes passing over the piles of books and files. As he glanced around, he
immediately saw the pattern. The stack on the left side of the desk was on NCB
chair programming—which was not alarming, since both Maki and Chronus had been
assigned to determine how Isa’s chair had been vulnerable to a Pulse Virus. In
the middle of the desk was a personal terminal that had been taken apart,
different parts scattered by the dismantled casing. On the left side of the
desk were medical articles on Elites by Dr. Michael Busen.
On the floor next to the desk was a very
tall stack with years etched on the metal casings of the files. Chronus picked
up the first file, flipping the protective cover open and tapping the screen to
life. Immediately, information on the previous Golden Elite, Gattriel,
appeared.
“Chronus?” Maki called.
The other Elite looked up.
“Are you alright?” Maki asked, confused.
“Why do you have this?” Chronus asked,
lifting the file.
“I was just curious about something.”
“And the other files?” Chronus pressed.
“These are not easily accessed. Does Isa know you have these?”
“Remus knows,” Maki said, turning back to
the NCB chair and plugging the drive into the correct port, tapping a display
button on the back of the chair that lifted the panels on the side of the chair
to make a functioning, interactive screen. “What tests did you run?”
“I ran a few more decryption scans on the
coding for the power management. I also ran a few tests on power allotment and
priority settings.”
“I thought we did that already,” Maki
said, touching the icons on the screen to pull up Chronus’ test reports.
“Yes, but…” Chronus stood next to Maki,
touching one of the report files, “those were on all active faces. We didn’t
run it on background processes.”
“Why would we? The chair did not
malfunction.”
“It had to in some way, otherwise the
Pulse Virus would not have been able to get past the security codes,” Chronus
disagreed.
“You think the hardware and original
manufacture coding was corrupt?” Maki asked skeptically. “She had that chair
for seven years. The only two that ever do maintenance on it are Isa and Remus.
No one else has access.”
“I know,” Chronus said. “That’s why
this
,” he motioned to a part of the
coding on the screen, “is so disturbing.”
Maki read over the lines of code, his
eyebrows furrowing as he continued reading.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” he
murmured. “Why are the
outgoing
transmission security codes missing? For an attack, they would need to destroy
the security for incoming transmissions. That would be the only way to get a
Pulse Virus to the chair.”
“That’s what I didn’t understand,
either,” Chronus said. “I know you have the log on Isa’s chair. I think we need
to review all outgoing transmissions from her chair and see when the codes were
deleted and how they were able to get into the chair’s central processor.”
“I agree,” Maki said, turning away to
search among the stacks of filed in his office. “I just don’t know how anyone
could remotely access it,” he muttered. “You have to be physically at the chair
to mess with this kind of stuff. Unless you’re Venus. But no one knows how to
hack her.”
“Well, those who have access to the chair
are pretty limited. We both know that Remus would sooner shoot himself in the
head than cause Isa harm. Rayal, too,” Chronus said, looking over the lines of
code, his brain trying to create explanations for the problem. “I don’t think
Isa’s trying to kill herself, and Tarah would never hurt her, either.” Chronus
turned to Maki. “What about the Significant?”
Maki chuckled, turning over his shoulder
to look at the other Bronze Elite.
“She’s a Trid who can’t read or write,
yet. Remember?” Maki chuckled. “You expect her to be able to delete a very specific
area of security coding in a high-security NCB chair?”
“It’s possible,” Chronus muttered, his
eyes showing his concern.
Maki shook his head, turning back to
Chronus as he pulled out another file and a blank drive, transferring the data
into the drive to be viewed on the NCB chair.
“No, she wouldn’t do that,” Maki said
gently. “She loves Isa.”
“How do you know that?”
“You can see it in her eyes,” Maki
answered, stopping in front of Chronus, his eyes locked with the other Elite’s.
Chronus quickly averted his gaze to the file, pointing at it.
“Where is the original drive?”
“I think I left it at the Syndicate.”
“Or it’s lost in here somewhere,” Chronus
chuckled teasingly.
“That’s a possibility.”
Chronus was silent for a moment, watching
the transfer complete and Maki put the drive into another port of the NCB
chair.
“You don’t think the Significant could
have done this?”
“Call her Kailynn,” Maki said. “That’s
her name.” Maki pressed a button on the NCB chair so a secondary screen would
unfold across the back of the chair. “And no, I do not believe she did it.”
Maki and Chronus both tried different
searches in the log, trying to find anything that would tell them how the
chair’s security codes had been changed. Before they knew it, three hours had
passed. Remus called Chronus when the Bronze Elite did not return to the
Syndicate when expected and the other Elite told him that he and Maki were
running tests and he would be there until all the scans were completed. Maki
told Remus that they would submit anything they found to the Syndicate network
to be reviewed.
Chronus rubbed his eyes and turned away
from the coding as the third hour wore on.
“I didn’t realize that Isa used her home
NCB chair so often. These logs are enormous.”
“You don’t think it’s hilarious how many
times she tried to contact Remus when she was on leave for a month?” Maki
chuckled. “Isa never knows how to stop working, does she?”
“None of us know how to stop working,”
Chronus chuckled brokenly. “Speaking of which, I didn’t even ask if you were
feeling better.”
“I am,” Maki said with a nod, still
glancing over the log. “I guess I scared a few of you.”
“We found you passed out on the floor of
your office,” Chronus said, his eyebrows high as he turned to face Maki. “It’s
Isa
who is expected to pass out and
scare us all to death, not you.”
“Dr. Busen said it was over exhaustion,”
Maki said, distracted by the information he was reading.
“You need to be careful,” Chronus said.
“We can’t have you passing out on us all the time.”
“I’ll be careful.”
Chronus went back to Maki’s side and
looked over the log.
“This is ridiculous,” he said. “Three
years back in the log, and the codes still aren’t there.” He sighed heavily.
“Maybe it was faulty from manufacturing.”
Maki stopped, blinking a few times before
turning to Chronus.
“Or maybe we haven’t gone back far
enough.”
“You want to go through all seven years
of the log? Are you crazy?”
“No,” Maki muttered. “Just the first six
months from five years ago.”
Chronus stopped immediately,
understanding what Maki was thinking.
“You don’t actually believe he got into
her NCB chair, do you?”
“After everything else he did?” Maki
said, typing the query into the computer. “I think he did.”
With the narrowed-down log, the two
Bronze Elites began scanning the days of coding records.
“Look here,” Chronus hissed, pointing.
“Right here, the outgoing transmission to Fortunea has the proper security
coding with a closed pathway.” He pointed to the next outgoing transmission.
“Here, on the transmission to Corinne, the pathway is open. The codes are gone
a month later.”
“This is the entire month before Isa got
sick,” Maki whispered. He sighed heavily, shaking his head. “He got into her
level at Anon Tower and he destroyed the coding of the chair…”