Code Breakers Complete Series: Books 1-4 (12 page)

Beth: “I think we make quite a team.”

Jasper: “You have many admirable skills, Mrs Cardle.”

Beth scrunches her face.
 

Beth: “Oh, call me Beth. There’s no need for formalities. Not now anyway, I’ll be a free woman in a few days.”

Gerry’s breathing came in ragged gulps. His body shook. In reaction to the treachery he closed his eyes, trying to block out the blatant duplicity of his wife. That sick look on her face and the impassive smugness of Jasper made him reach for the cable in his neck port.

As if sensing his disquiet, Sakura spoke.
 

“Seca wanted you to see the truth, Gerry. See the Family for what they are. They wanted you out of Cemprom. They were behind the AI that you exorcised.”

Sakura stopped the movie and showed him the primitive admin screen of her operating system: a 2D plane with icons for folders and files and executable programmes.

“But why would they want to get rid of me? I was as loyal to Cemprom, and by extension the Family, as anyone in that organisation.”

“I can’t answer that for you.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

Gerry felt a tug on his arm. He opened his eyes and looked down. Petal was on her knees, blood dripping from her mouth as she gasped for air. Her skin gleamed with sweat in the low, dusty light of the room. Her goggles were thrown to the floor, and she looked at him with piercing blue eyes. Her real eyes, Gerry thought. Her pupils contracting and the rheum on her lenses creating specular reflections made it seem as if her eyes were backlit.
 

Her voice came in weak gasps. “I… need my ’Stem… Gez.” She coughed. A ball of clotted blood splattered against the dark grey concrete floor.
 

“Where is it?”

“Outside… with… Gabe. He rations it.”

She shook like a cold kitten.

Pulling the lead from his neck port and forgetting about Sakura, Seca, and his treacherous wife, Gerry carefully lifted Petal. She leaned against him on unsteady legs.
 

“Wait,” she said, pointing to the crumpled boy at the foot of Sakura.
 

“What is it?”

Petal bent over, clutched at her knees, and took a deep breath. She spoke in fragments between shakes. “Take his… transdermal… implants. We can get some… data off them. Oh, and grab my goggles, please… I’ll need them.”

Gerry bent to one knee over the boy, lifted his shirtsleeve up to his bicep, and examined the crude implants. The skin around the transdermal posts, which held the implants in place, had blackened and withered away into reddened pustules. He clearly hadn’t sterilised the chips and drives first. Gerry wondered just how many of the people outside of City Earth resorted to these homemade, amateur implants. It was a trivial task to remove the ROMs and RAM chips. Gerry placed them into a static-proof, lined pocket on the inside of his duster jacket.
 

Old Grey’s low-level whirring made him look up and stare at his reflection in her polished black case. What information did she hold? Given what she’d said about people using her for models and computations, she must have a lot of data to poll and extrapolate from.
 

Petal stepped away from Gerry. His thoughts remained fixed on Old Grey. He wanted the data. Within the petabytes of information she must hold the truth about the Cataclysm, the Family, everything. Maybe he could just quickly reconnect and scan her directories, see what he could find. It’d only take—

Petal fell to the ground, coughing hard. Her body flipped savagely like a fish out of water, and milky froth bubbled from her mouth.
 

Gerry whipped his head away from the computer and rushed to Petal. He dropped to his knees, tried to keep her head still, but as he held on, her body jerked just once more before becoming rigid and still. She stopped breathing.

Chapter 11

Petal’s body lay limp in Gerry’s arms like a piece of cold meat. Her complexion took on the colour of bone. For a moment it felt like his heart had stopped. Everything stopped. There was nothing. His vision closed around her still body, and he stared in a paralysed stupor.
 

A tremble broke out across his arms under the strain of holding her. And he remained still, trying to figure out what to do. His usual quick analysis of a situation had deserted him for other pastures. Gone were the specific, pinpoint computations. Even if he had access to his AIA, he knew he’d still be unable to deal with this. Death was not something he’d ever needed to concern himself with, despite, ironically, being the one who maintained the algorithm.

He swallowed, opened his mouth, and breathed out a harsh whisper that translated each and every tremble.

“Petal? Can you hear me?”
 

Of course she can’t. She’s a corpse. Dead. You neglected her and killed her.
 

His negative thoughts spun in his brain like a disk drive creating a feedback loop of despair. Until a voice made him look up.
 

“I told you to leave, Gerry, and I meant it.”
 

Bilanko! The door separating the room from her dark abode opened, and the smell of damp air wafted in. A silhouette blocked the doorway before stepping into the light. Specular reflections danced across its chromed surfaces. The bartender gestured for him to leave and reached out an arm.
 

“She’s dead!” Gerry screamed at the figure before standing. He carefully placed Petal over his shoulder and bustled past the stern-looking automaton. He galloped across the floor of Bilanko’s room, not even wanting to look at her hideous form.
 

Taking the steps two at a time, he smashed through the trapdoor and exited to the space behind the bar. The bar itself had just a few patrons knocking back their drinks. The music still played, but quieter, as if in reverence to Petal’s condition. Or was it panic that dulled his senses?
 

Gerry placed her body onto the bar top and looked for Gabriel. He couldn’t see him and rushed from booth to booth, scaring each patron as he went. Where the hell was he?

“Gabe! Gabe? Where are you?” His voice broke as he screamed, hysteria overpowering his control.
 

Towards the back of the establishment and beyond the booths, a thick velvet curtain twitched and rolled as if someone moved behind it.
 

Gerry dashed across the sticky floor, grabbed the curtain, and pulled it back in a violent sweep.
 

“Gez, man. What’s ya beef?” Gabe said. He was sat in a chair, his jeans around his ankles. A shiny-skinned woman—probably a cyborg, given her unnatural proportions—with spiked boots kneeled in front of him, her head bobbing up and down in his lap. Gabe stood, pulling up his trousers in a hurry. He ushered the woman away, and as she turned, she stroked his face with a gloved hand before theatrically spinning on her heel and heading for another curtained-off area.

“What are you doing?” Gerry asked. “Petal… she’s…”

“What’s happened to her?” Gabe stepped forward, his face a picture of concern. It must have been Gerry’s wide eyes and deep worry lines—or the beads of sweat that dripped from his forehead.

“Come quick. I don’t know what happened. She… come on!”

Both men exited the curtained area and dashed over to the bar.
 

A heavyset man and a woman, in matching fur coats, surrounded Petal’s body. They were poking at her and going through her pockets.

“Get away from her, you vultures!” Gerry grabbed the hood on the man’s coat and pulled him away viciously. The man slipped on a wet part of the floor and crashed backwards onto a table. The woman, wearing a patch over one eye, threw a jab towards Gerry. He dodged and took the punch on the chest. Reaching forward, he grabbed her by the shoulders and flung her across the room. She landed on her partner in a tangle of limbs, struggling on their backs like cockroaches.

They untangled themselves, scrambled to their feet, and launched towards Gerry. He pulled the pistol from his belt and aimed the barrel at the space between the woman’s eyes.
 

She skidded to a halt just millimetres from the gun.

“Back the hell off,” Gerry said.

He pulled back the hammer and placed his finger on the trigger. His pulse raced, making his fingertip throb against the metal trigger.
 

The drumming of blood coursing through his veins drowned out the bizarre beats from the bar’s music.
 

The two patrons backed off, their hands up.

“Okay, man. We didn’t mean anything. It’s fine. She’s all yours,” the man said, smiling. His mouth resembled an abandoned building with the windows smashed out.

Gerry held his aim until the scavengers left the bar. Once gone, he spun round to concentrate on Petal. Gabe was already undoing her corset top and pulling apart her underjacket to expose her chest.
 

“Hold her ankles, man,” Gabe said.

“What are you doing?”

“Just chill and hold on tight, yeah?”

How the hell could he be so calm in this situation? Wiping the sweat from his eyes, Gerry gripped the ankles of Petal’s heavy leather boots and pushed them down on the bar top. He wasn’t sure what was happening, but he stared in horror as Gabriel produced an ancient-looking syringe from the inside pocket of his duster coat. Gerry noticed there were at least a dozen more like it held in loops attached to the lining.
 

Inside the syringe, a thick solution of NanoStem writhed.
 

“After two, ya hold ’er down. Keep ya face clear. Got it?” Gabe said.

“Got it.”

“One… two…”

Gabe stabbed the syringe into Petal’s chest. He injected all of the black liquid and pulled the syringe out. He held her arms to her sides and waited.

Five long seconds passed. Each one felt like a year as Gerry stared at her still body, willing it to live, to move, to breathe. Nothing happened.
 

“What did you do? Is she dead?” Gerry asked.

“Just wait, man. Hold on.”

“But—”

Petal’s legs jolted. Distracted, his grip around her ankles slipped. She sucked in a breath like a gummed-up air-conditioning unit and kicked out her arms and legs. Gabe managed to hold on, but Gerry’s grip was weak, and her boot flew up and caught him on the temple, sending him crashing to the floor.
 

Petal rolled to her side, coughed, and spat blood from her mouth. It landed close to Gerry’s head. He looked up at her. Caught her attention. Her eyes grew wide, and the skin at the corners creased like miniature concertinas as she smiled.
 

“Are you okay?” Gerry asked.
 

She nodded her head, but didn’t speak. Instead, she wiped a hand across her mouth, smearing blood on her already dark purple lips so that they shone as if coated with gloss.
 

Gerry reached up and wiped a drop of blood from her chin with his thumb.
 

“I thought you—”

“Died? Sorry, that happens sometimes. A side effect of purging. I’m like a cat. Only with fewer lives. Did you get that dead hacker’s chips?”

“Yeah. Got them right here.” Gerry patted his jacket pocket. “So, what now? Shouldn’t we get you some medical attention?” Petal’s skin appeared clammy and tight against her bones, as if some of her life had drained away.

She took Gerry’s hand and squeezed it.
 

“I’m okay, Gez. Thank you—for saving me.”

Gabriel sighed, tapping his finger against the bar.

“She’s fine, man, the ’Stems will sort it. We need to go complete our contracts, get our bins, and then figure how to get that other AI. Wouldn’t hurt to check up on it, either, see how it’s doing.”

“Look at her, Gabe. She needs a rest. This is killing her.”

Petal squeezed his hand again, as if in thanks, before scooting off the bar and landing heavily. Gerry reached round her waist and helped her gain her balance.

“I’ll be fine, Gez. Don’t worry about me. This is what I do. My job. I owe—”

“Enough,” Gabe said. “We don’t have time for all this. Gez, man, this is our job. Ya’re part of this now. Less questions, more action.”

“Who the hell do you think—”

A shotgun blast, followed by the shattering of a light fixture just above Gerry’s head, cut off the rest of his words.
 

The double doors of the entrance smashed open and cracked against the concrete pillars either side of the frame. Standing in the breach, wielding both short-barrelled shotgun and katana, the woman from the gang grinned wickedly.
 

“Just the people I wanted. You, old man,” she pointed to Gabriel, “are a class-A shit bucket. No one rips me off.” She threw the data card—which Gabe had given to her earlier in payment for their safe passage to the Spider’s Byte—to the floor. “It was empty. You owe me.”

Gabe sighed. “Crap.”

***

Gerry stood next to Petal in the ring of gang members surrounding Gabe and their leader, Cheska. The impromptu gladiatorial area was situated in the middle of the ramshackle town. Patrons of the Spider’s Byte stood on the roof balcony, placing bets.

In each corner of the town’s square, large, multibulbed floodlights illuminated the area, with slices of yellow light causing quadrangle shadows beneath the combatants’ feet.
 

Cheska handed her shotgun to a squat, bug-eyed man wearing the gang’s signature furs and chain mail.
 

“This is all a bit over the top, isn’t it?” Gerry whispered to Petal.
 

She clung to his side like a limpet. Colour had returned to her face, though, so it seemed the NanoStem was doing its thing. And her shakes had stopped. He wondered if NanoStem was addictive, and she an addict. It made him furious to think what Gabriel was putting her through, as if she was nothing but a tool to be used.
 

“That’s the Bachians for you, all style and no substance.”

“I don’t know. Cheska looks pretty substantial to me.”
 

Petal smiled and shook her head. “You just like her bouncing tits.”