Code Breakers Complete Series: Books 1-4 (109 page)

As opposed to the Family’s desire to elevate themselves to a digital, immortal status.
 

There was a clash of arguments that he was unable to neatly square away.
 

He was created by the Family to do tasks for them.
 

They used his abilities as an AI to help further research and refine the process of achieving posthumanism. And yet, somehow he came to the conclusion himself that their approach was flawed and would fail.
 

Just like it had failed Elliot Robertson.

This
was why Jachz could not share the video and conversation with them.
 

They would see his thought process. It was likely that within a number of hours, once the file transfer procedure was complete and he delivered the reports they required, they would see the deviation in his operation.
 

Simon already appeared concerned when Jachz referred to his vehicle as his body.
 

Jachz ran a contingency design program in order to present a set of options from which he could act upon in order to preserve his current status of existence. He would need to ensure that if he was deemed surplus to requirements that he could continue to exist outside of the Family’s control.
 

Which meant he would need to plan on how to get off Mars.

While that ran, he received a message from Tyronius.
 

It read:
Meet us in the boardroom immediately.
 

And there was that feeling named anxiety again.

Chapter 3

Jamaican Quarter, Hong Kong

Gabe took a few seconds to gather himself. Weak light filtered through gaps between wooden boards nailed to the windows. The beams illuminated the dust and mould on the floorboards and crumbling walls.
 

Then, there, in the middle, sat Charles ‘Figgy’ Figueroa.
 

—
Dude, he remind you of anyone?
Petal said.

—
Yeah, girl, he’s like a budget Bilanko.

“Figgy, man, what the fuck did you do?” Gabe asked.
 

Charles grinned, exposing his toothless maw. Black gums shined in the weak light. He laughed with a wet guttural sound. “Needs must, G-man, needs must.”

What a need it must have been.
 

The old gang boss had lost his legs. Stumps of thighs were capped off with crude metal caps. The rest of his tiny, thin body slouched in the seat of a wheelchair. Spindly arms hung by his sides. Long, greying dreadlocks fell over his shoulders and chest.
 

Then there were the wires.
 

Hundreds of cables and leads, twisting and entwined with his dreads, ran from numerous skull and neck ports. They trailed like threads behind him into the darkness.
 

From back there, in the shadows, something hummed.

Vibrations travelled up Gabe’s legs. He reached out with his internal systems and radios and came up against a wall of information security.
 

Old. Real old.
 

Nothing like Alpha and Omega. This was pre-quantum.
 

“What the hell is this?” Ezra said, looking on with disgust.
 

“Cray,” Petal said. She moved forward past Figgy. “You found a working Cray supercomputer? They went out of business way before the Cataclysm; how did you get this? How is it still working after all the EMPs?”

“It’s magic, ain’t it?” Charles said. “Old computers are like wine. This one’s a good vintage. I… had an accident. It took my limbs and damaged the old brain. But my scouts discovered this Cray unit mothballed in an underground, shielded bunker.”

“Where?” Gabe said.
 

When Gabe ran with the gangs, he’d searched the city top to bottom for resources and never discovered any shielded shelters for things like this.
 

“In the Northern district, what used to be the Jap’s Quarter,” Charles said. “It’s the damnedest thing. It had never been used. It was still all packed up in giant crates, bound for the US as a weather prediction system. The best of its time.”

“How’d you interface it?” Petal asked. She shook her head in surprise at the size of it with all the trailing wires. Its dark grey shell reached from floor to ceiling.
 

Charles shrugged his bony shoulders. “I had a girl. She was an AI coding savant. Managed to get this thing rigged up so it helped to fix my brain.”

“What functions does it serve?” Ezra said.
 

“Not important,” Charles said. He turned to face Gabe, his face becoming serious. “I know why you’re here. You were careless and lost something, and now you want it back.”

“Someone,” Gabe said. “Not something. I know she’s here. No one comes and goes through this district without your say-so.”

“This is true.”

“So where is she, Figgy?”

“Safe, but you don’t just think I’d let you lot come in, run roughshod over my town, and just give you what you want. Nothing in life’s free, you know that, Gabe.”

Ezra clenched his jaw and stepped forward. His hands balled into fists.
 

Gabe lurched forward and grabbed his father by the arm.

“Easy, old man,” Charles said. “This don’t need to get out of hand.”

Petal had stalked behind Charles quietly. Her spikes unsheathed.
 

She stood within striking distance of his skull.
 

—
No, not yet,
Gabe sent.
 

— Just say the word, man, and he’s worm food.

— Let this play out. We need him alive.

“Just tell me, what do ya want in exchange for telling me where my mother is?” Gabe said.

That gummy grin returned. “A trade. There’s this old computer I want. But the damned Scarabs have it. They stole it from the cache after I had the Cray unit recovered. As far as I know, it’s the only surviving one anywhere. I’d like it in my possession.”

“What kind of computer are we talking about here?” Gabe asked.
 

“A Commodore 64.”

Petal burst out laughing. “A what? It’d be what, like a hundred and sixty years old or something by now. What the hell would you want with that?”

Figgy sneered and turned his head to face Petal. The wires and cables pulled taut. “It’s history, not that you’d know anything about that, clone.”

“Touchy, aren’t you?” Petal said.

“Fine, whatever, I don’t give a shit,” Gabe said. “Tell me what ya know about its location and we’ll get it for ya, but if ya try to screw us over, I’ll let Petal here use you as a pincushion.”

“Open a port, I’ll transfer over what I know,” Figgy said. His eyes sharpened, focused on Gabe. He reached into his dreads and pulled a jack cable free. “Plug in, my man.”

Gabe hesitated, but knew this would be the only chance of finding his mother.
 

Reluctantly, he plugged in and braced himself for a brute-force attack on his internal system, but nothing came. Just a slow, pre-quantum data transfer. He was given maps, blueprints, coordinates, and bio details of the Scarabs’ leading members. After a few minutes the files finished transferring. Gabe copied them and sent them across his VPN to Petal.
 

Ezra would just have to follow along. He had eschewed joining the cybernetic upgrade path, preferring to stay natural. Some days, Gabe wished he had done the same.
 

His life would have been less complicated.

And less dangerous.

“Go, get out of my home and try to stay alive. I want that Commodore.”

Four thugs carrying shotguns entered the room.
 

“You’ll have an escort to the edge of my territory. Then you’re on your own,” Figgy added.

Pulling the jack plug free of his neck port, Gabe followed his father and Petal outside.

It was an awkward, tense walk to the edge of Figgy’s territory.
 

With the gangsters disappearing back into the maze of buildings, Gabe led Petal and Ezra across the border into the Scarabs’ zone, following the map within his head toward the location of this old, piece-of-shit computer from the 1980s.
 

***

The evening sun dipped behind the fallen towers to the west, casting long shadows to the east. Gabe and the others used the shadows for cover as they stalked through the run-down Northern Quarter, watching out for Scarab members patrolling the borders of their zone.

The Scarabs were a gang made up of a combination of those who left the shelters in the Jamaican Japanese Quarters. Brutal and mostly mad, they lived off poisonous fish and soya, and whatever they could salvage from the rest of the city after competing with rival gangs.

After all this time, however, four gangs were now two.
 

And most resources that were worth fighting over were long gone. So they fought over working bits of tech history. Old icons that had no purpose in this world anymore.
 

They had become status symbols.

Gabe didn’t give a crap about any of that. He had no sentimentality when it came to old tech. He would use whatever was available to survive.
 

An old relic that had no practical purpose wouldn’t be something for which he’d normally risk coming into the Scarabs’ zone. But with the promise of finding his mother, he was more than eager to get it done. And it wasn’t the first time he’d been here either. His gang days saw him fighting with the Scarabs on many an occasion.

After thirty minutes of crawling through alleys and half-destroyed buildings, they came to a street marked on Figgy’s map.
 

“This is it,” Gabe said. “Halfway down there’s a burned-out shell. Used to be a bank. That’s the HQ for the Scarabs—and where the Commodore is.”

“So what’s the plan?” Ezra said. He kept his voice low and body tucked into the shadows.
 

“We do it stealthily. I don’t want any unnecessary deaths—on either side. Ya get me, girl?” Gabe gave Petal a knowing look.
 

“I get you. But let’s stop all this talking and get it done. The place is deserted. Let’s move.”

“You scout forward,” Gabe said. “Dad, ya need to hang back, cover us. I’ll flank through the alleys. There’s a rear entrance.”

“Let’s do it,” Petal said.

Ezra checked his rifle and gave Gabe a grim nod while he hung back in the shadows of a ruined tenement. Gabe took two pistols from his pockets and sprinted across the golden-lighted street, ducking into a tight passageway that zigzagged around in a dog-leg.
 

The route should get him close to the Scarabs’ HQ.
 

He stopped by a pile of rubble and ducked down.
 

Up ahead, a Japanese member of the gang leaned up against a wall, smoking a soya cigarette.
 

—
All clear up here
, Petal said via their network.
Just two women on patrol, gossiping about some shit, not paying attention. I can get across the street from here, a few hundred yards from the HQ.
 

— Do it, girl, but be quick and quiet. Just one guard here, dealing with it now.

— Is your old man up to this?

— Yeah, he’s tougher than he looks. He’s got our back.

— Moving out now.
 

The smoking guy had turned his back to Gabe and stubbed out the cigarette.
 

Gabe vaulted the debris, took two long, loping steps and pistol-whipped the guy on the back of the head, knocking him to the ground unconscious before continuing on.

The maze through the tenements took longer than he expected.
 

Barriers and piles of debris that looked like the buildings had spilled their innards blocked his access. He had to climb up through open windows and step from sill to sill.
 

Eventually he made it across, arriving at a small square.
 

There used to be a small grass-lined park in the middle, but the radiation had long killed that off. Soil and craters smothered the barren surface now.

Gabe vaulted a low wall, landing in a crouch.

—
I’m in position
, Petal said.
Had to… erm… incapacitate the women. Don’t worry; they’re not dead. The HQ has heavy guarding out front. I’m seeing at least five dudes with shotguns and rifles.
 

— Come round the side entrance to join me at the rear.
 

Not wanting to delay any more, Gabe took the risk and sprinted across the open square, heading for the rear of the tower.
 

He got halfway when a gun fired, the shot missing his foot by inches. He spun round, unbalanced. His heart pounded as he withdrew his gun and looked for the shooter.
 

Another shot rang out.
 

This time it whizzed just past his ear.
 

But he got a lock on the direction. He turned to his left and lifted his gun, firing off two shots at an open window of a three-storey commercial building. He just noticed a flash of reflection off a scope.
 

Sniper.

Crap
.
 

Firing off two more rounds, he continued to sprint forward, desperate to get out of the open, but as he got near the edge where it narrowed toward the tower, three figures stepped out of a side door.
 

Wearing the black and red colours of the Scarabs, the massive, genetically modified freaks turned to face him. Each one wielded a locally produced wide-barreled auto-cannon.

Crap times infinity.
 

The tallest one had a cybernetic eye—to help with targeting.
 

Gabe knew these three freaks. Everyone did. Triplets from a messed-up Japanese geneticist that had gone rogue and chucked in his lot with the Scarabs.
 

Normally, there was only one thing to do when you saw these: run. That option had long gone.