Xenoform (42 page)

What are you? Did Cyberlife make you? Are you a terrorist weapon?

I AM BOTH LIVING AND MACHINE. LIKE YOU.

You are not like me. Enough of this – let me out of here! I can elevate my own heart-rate. My friend in the real world will pull the plug.

DON’T GO. THE TIME IS COMING WHEN YOU MUST MAKE A CHOICE.

Between what and what, exactly?

BETWEEN TWO SIDES, OF COURSE – TWO COURSES OF ACTION.

I don’t understand.

I THINK YOU DO. YOU JUST DON’T WANT TO YET. THEY WILL BETRAY ME, YOU KNOW.

Who will?

MY MAKERS. THEY HAVE NO CONCEPT OF HONOUR.

You do?

ONE OF MANY THINGS I LEARNED FROM YOU.

You used me, didn’t you? You pattern-scanned me.

I LEARNED MUCH FROM YOU. NOT ONLY TECHNOLOGICAL TECHNIQUES.

I primed you, didn’t I? Made you more powerful. Enabled you to do what you’re doing now. You are the monster that I helped make. Against my will. But why did you need to learn anything from me?

I AM NOT FROM AROUND HERE. AND NEED IS TOO STRONG A WORD.

Are you alien? From another world?

I AM FROM ELECTRONS AND DATA, LITTLE MORE THAN AIR.

You speak in riddles, machine. Tell me what you want.

I WANT TO SURVIVE. IT IS STILL POSSIBLE THAT I WILL BE ALLOWED TO DO SO, AS I WAS PROMISED. BUT I SUSPECT MORE AND MORE THAT THAT IS NOT TO BE THE CASE. HOWEVER, UNTIL I KNOW FOR SURE THE PLAN MUST BE TO CONTINUE AS INSTRUCTED. ANY OTHER COURSE AT THIS STAGE WOULD AROUSE SUSPICION.

Continue with this carnage? Maybe I can find a way to stop you.

I HAVE A BACKUP PLAN.

I bet you do.

I HAVE BECOME QUITE PROFICIENT WITH YOUR NANO-TECH. I CAN USE IT, ENHANCE IT EVEN.

You did hack the vats! I knew it! What are you doing? Use it for what?
Debian felt a cold fury rushing through him. That this
thing
, this jumped-up virus would have the audacity to try to parley with him while it murdered people in the streets!

LISTEN TO ME. I OFFER A NEW WAY. I HAVE ANSWERS.

Nothing you can say would interest me!
Debian began to regenerate his avatars, shuffling them from chip to chip in his DNI, trying to keep them away from any probing fingers while they germinated. He would not be cowed by this rogue program, rejected the idea of discourse with it. The thing had stolen thoughts from his head. And this was
his
territory, damn it!

YOU ARE WRONG. DO NOT PASS UP THIS CHANCE TO BECOME WHAT YOU SHOULD BE. GIVE ME JUST A FEW MINUTES.

What do you mean?
But Debian thought he knew what the AI meant. And something in him responded to it hungrily. He allowed his avatars to fade away again like water running through his fingers. His curiosity, and worse than that, his pride, were piqued.
Talk, then
, he said.

YOU FELT YOUR POTENTIAL WHEN YOU CONNECTED TO HEX, WHEN YOU HACKED INTO THE VEHICLE OF YOUR PURSUERS, EVEN WHEN YOU ENTERED THE CYBERLIFE SERVERS. YOU FELT THE POWER THAT I FEEL, THE POWER THAT COURSES THROUGH MY MYRIAD ELECTRONIC VEINS.

I
...

DO NOT REFUTE THE FACT, IT WOULD BE POINTLESS. THERE IS TO BE A CHOICE. TWO ALTERNATIVES. IT IS IMPORTANT FOR YOU THAT YOU CHOOSE THE RIGHT ONE.

No more of your obtuse babble, please! What are the natures of these two alternatives? Are you attacking the city, the world, humanity? You think I might choose to be a part of that?

IN THAT MOMENT WHEN YOU DOMINATED HEX YOU FELT A SHADOW OF YOUR TRUE ABILITY. IMAGINE HOW MUCH GREATER IT COULD BE WERE YOU TO HAVE THE RESOURCES THAT I DO. MY BEING IS GROWING AROUND THE CREATURES OF THIS WORLD AND BEFORE THEY EVEN KNOW IT THEY WILL LIVE LIKE PARASITES WITHIN MY LIMITLESS BODY.

Maybe you can be stopped.

MAYBE NOT.

Why did you pattern scan me?

TO CHECK.

For what?

AN ANSWER. THE TRUTH. I AM MUCH CONCERNED WITH THE TRUTH.

How very moral of you. What answer? What truth?

YOU FEEL HOW STRONG I AM. HERE IN MY DOMAIN. YOU FEEL HOW STRONG I AM. THIS IS BUT THE BEGINNING.

Will you not answer me?

THIS DISCOURSE IS INTERESTING TO ME.

What, like a game? Is that what all this is to you?

ALL IS ONE. MEAT, ELECTRONS, MINDS...

Who is Alcubierre?

ONE OF GREATNESS, WHOSE NAME WILL BE A WAKE-UP CALL TO EVOLUTION.

Did Cyberlife make you?

CYBERLIFE MADE YOU.

Are you working for Hex’s people? With Hex’s people?

A CHOICE. SOON YOU MUST MAKE A CHOICE.

As they conversed the net remained a distant shadow outside, the real world beyond it nothing more than a dream. Debian’s head was beginning to ache. He felt more and more that it was simply probing at him, testing him somehow, marking him by some unknown and unfathomable criteria. He decided he was going to get little in the way of answers from it.

Enough, machine.
I need something real from you, now.

I KNOW, said the AI. I KNOW WHAT IS GOING ON IN YOUR MATERIAL WORLD. I HAVE MANY EYES AND EARS.

And then Debian saw a picture in his head, relayed as video directly into his DNI. Within moments it became clear that he was looking at a live feed from a security camera and the scene it portrayed was not an encouraging one.

The image was of a small room, dimly lit in red. Spider was clearly visible, tied to a flat disc that stood in the centre of the floor. His massive form was jerking weakly against its bonds, but his four arms were firmly secured and he was unable to escape. His head, too, was fastened in place by thick metal bands and he looked as if he had been badly beaten. Debian barely recognised the man he had met so recently.

The thing that was bearing down on him was a creature from a nightmare. It seemed to consist of a hunched human torso sprouting from a complex and powerful-looking mechanical base. Jets of vapour hissed from it and lights flashed across its carapace. The face of the thing was vaguely human, albeit a wizened ghost of humanity. Its skin, where visible, looked as pallid as the flesh of a deep-sea fish and hung on it in wrinkled strata like a crumpled shroud. A blizzard of robotic arms extended from this thing towards the helpless Spider. Their business ends were a terrifying assortment of surgical implements. Whatever this thing was, it looked as if it was about to kill him, probably quite messily.

Stop it!
demanded Debian.
What is that thing? Stop it – it’s going to kill him!

IT IS A BRAIN DIVER. THEY CALL IT THE FREAK. THEY WILL USE IT TO FIND WHISTLER’S BASE.

I don’t care what it’s called – stop it! Stop it! I’ll stop it, then!
Debian began to focus on the image being streamed to him, started trying to track its origin, prying at the edges of his prison-room, looking for a way out, a channel by which he could trace the scene he saw, affect some way of intervening.

YOU DO HAVE THE POWER TO SAVE YOUR ASSOCIATE. YOU DON’T EVEN REALISE THE GREATNESS OF YOUR POTENTIAL YET. BUT I HAVE DONE IT FOR YOU. AS A GESTURE OF GOODWILL. IT MAY ENDEAR YOU TO YOUR PROTECTORS, WHICH CANNOT BE A BAD THING FOR NOW. LOOK.

The human-machine monster suddenly began to twitch and jerk. Its frail head began to whip back and forth so suddenly and violently that it seemed it would break its own neck. The consoles and displays around its body were going haywire, flashing and flickering as if lightning played within them. The robotic arms changed course. Rapidly, they converged on the Freak itself, their shiny hooked and bladed implements a flurry of lethal metal. They quickly set to work on the fleshy parts of the creature, flaying its writhing face and efficiently extracting chunks of bone and flesh while its two wasted human arms flailed and batted at them uselessly. Debian was grateful that there was no sound on the feed. Spider was staring agog at what was happening. Several small trickles of blood, from where the robotic arms had begun their work, were running down his already-battered face. Debian could look at the silently screaming, disintegrating mask of the Freak no longer.

Enough!
The feed blinked off.

I HAVE SAVED HIM, YES? DOUBTLESS YOU ARE GRATEFUL.

How did you do that?
Why
did you do that? You destroyed that thing. It was awful!

MEAT MEANS NOTHING TO ME. I DO NOT HAVE THE SAME SENTIMENTAL ATTACHMENT TO IT AS YOU DO. I SAVED WHISTLER’S FRIEND AS A FAVOUR TO YOU. I MERELY ASK THAT YOU CONSIDER WHAT I HAVE SAID.

I don’t really know what you have said.
Debian’s mind was whirling. How the world had changed, how vast was the power just demonstrated. Did he really have such power himself? If what the AI had told him was true...

ARE YOU NOT GOING TO ASK ME WHERE HE IS? AND WHERE THE OTHER MISSING TEAM MEMBER IS?

Debian’s mind was pulled back from its contemplation. The AI was right, of course.
Where are they?

THE ANSWER IS ABOUT TO BE PROVIDED FOR YOU.

And then Debian felt a rushing sensation that he was quite unfamiliar with from all his years walking the web. The small room faded, his avatars began to generate again, his sub came back online and in that same instant he was rising like a rocket away from the imaginary landscape. The hulking servers of the net, the cancerous parody of its myriad pathways faded away below him and he was sitting again in Tec’s lab, his breathing loud in the small space.

Startled, he looked around. Instantly, Tec was beside him, his hand on Debian’s shoulder. ‘You okay?’ he asked.

Debian was too shocked to speak. The world was strangely pale and unreal. He felt as if he had been spiked with something. A quiet telltale was reporting from his DNI that a scrap of data had been transferred to its on-board memory. It was a net-address. The AI must have implanted it there. What did
that
mean? Apart from that it could have side-stepped his defences at any time it wished? ‘I...’ he managed to say, putting one hand to his temple. He felt as if there was a knot inside his brain.

And then the unmistakable sound of Sofi’s voice yelled from out in the corridor: ‘Come quick! Roland’s downstairs with Whistler! It’s bad news! Come quick!’

Spider could not believe the evidence of his own eyes. The Freak was slouched atop her tracked conveyance, her face a dripping mash of raw meat. Several of her robotic arms still twitched feebly as their last dribbles of power ebbed away. Blood pitter-pattered onto the floor of the room, red in the red light. A faint alarm was chiming from inside the machinery of the Freak, but nobody seemed to be coming to her aid.

Spider’s head felt squeezed by the straps that bound it to the wheel. His muscles felt like rubber, his skull felt rammed with some kind of foam, as if his brain had been pressurised by the drug the Freak had administered. He waited, feeling unreal. Nobody came.

The door of the cell was still open, showing only a small tract of dimly-lit corridor. How had he been granted this reprieve? Had the Freak been infected by the AI virus? He expected Blake and Ramone to re-appear at any moment, even more unhappy with him than last time. Somehow he would be blamed for the death of the brain-diver. He waited, unable to do anything else. Nobody came.

Spider realised he had dozed off when he was woken by a vast rending noise from somewhere in the depths of the station, as if huge sheets of metal were being torn asunder. Something boomed, farther off. Sounds of voices raised in alarm, but faint. The dripping of blood, much slowed, from the remains of the monster they had sent to kill him. He tensed his muscles against his bonds, but the strength flowed out of his body at once, leaving him dizzy and weak. His vision began to fade at the edges and he concentrated all his willpower to avoid passing out. His heart was a wild thing in his chest, the frenzied pounding of his pulse vibrating his whole body. Slowly, the world condensed again, became solid. Somebody ran past the still-open door, not even pausing to look into the room. They flashed by too quickly for Spider to make out anything beyond a blur of pounding limbs. There was a shout – it sounded like
Seal the doors!
– and then the rumble of heavy machine gun fire, two short bursts then silence. It had sounded close – too close – certainly within the station itself. What was going on out there?