Hacker: The Outlaw Chronicles (8 page)

Austin?

Austin’s voice drifted into my head, but his garbled words came in fragments.

I tried to push the darkness away, tried to force my eyes to stay open, but I couldn’t. I felt the weight of my body sink deeper into the chair. My torso and limbs shook, my skin trembling, my bones rattling.

My eyes squeezed closed, my teeth ground together. The world surrendered to utter blackness and somewhere far away I heard a scream.

S
HE WASN’T dead
.
One good thing, anyway
, Austin thought, but he wasn’t so sure about any of this.

He leaned over Nyah as she lay unconscious on the chair and, with an antiseptic wipe, carefully cleaned the access points he’d drilled into her skull. Each of the precisely placed channels were rimmed with a thin titanium ring that could be capped when not in use—a design upgrade he’d developed after reading an Italian neurologist’s research paper on postoperative sterility practices.

Tapping the brain was minimally invasive, yet there was always a risk of introducing bacteria to the meninges, the brain’s protective outer membranes. The caps were safeguards against that.

He pulled off the surgical gloves then sank into the chair beside Nyah and rubbed the back of his neck. A dull throb worked through him and his eyes felt like they’d been packed with sand and glass.

When had he slept last? Two days ago? Three?

It was all a blur, a timeless cycle of research, self-experimentation and post-clinical analysis. Every trial led to more recalibration, more self-experimentation.

Rinse and repeat
had become his mantra.

Experiment, analyze, recalibrate.

Rinse and repeat.

Collect data points, mine the data, extrapolate conclusions, and postulate the next move.

Rinse and repeat.

His dogged tenacity was finally beginning to pay dividends. Each new foray brought new insights into the inner workings of the human mind,
his mind.
But there was no end to it. Like a mythic Hydra, every question he answered led to two more. But, he assured himself, today marked the beginning of new opportunities.

Having Nyah’s help would certainly speed the process. Maybe she could get above the trees and see the forest where he could not, find the path through it. Sometimes it was simply a matter of looking at a problem with fresh eyes.

He reached over and adjusted the oxygen monitor clipped to her left index finger. He glanced at the red numbers on the LED display. Her levels were good. Heart rate was stable, and her breathing came in steady draws now, not the near hyperventilation she’d experienced earlier. Except for her mild panic episode, the procedure had gone exceptionally well and required only two hours.

Still, as excited as he was to have Nyah as a research partner, the possibility of harming her twisted his stomach into a thick knot. He’d known what to do, true, but something could’ve gone wrong. Still could. They were just beginning and this was uncharted territory, the ragged edge of the map.

On top of all his medical concerns, there was the question of Bell and the FBI. Even she couldn’t know if or how that would play out. Regardless, her world would never be the same. If he could spare her any more pain, emotional or physical, he would.

Nyah stirred and groaned.

Austin leaned forward and pulled up the thin fleece blanket he’d laid across her earlier. The room was cold and gooseflesh covered her arms.

It was possible—no,
probable
—that all of this was a terrible idea. It was one thing to experiment on himself; it was another altogether to include her, even if she
had
insisted. Nyah never took no for an answer, and he hoped that it wouldn’t come back to bite both of them.

She was unlike anyone he’d ever known. Most people were two-dimensional, at best, living like automatons. They’d drone through life in a daze, always looking around, but never actually seeing anything or engaging in life’s bigger questions. They didn’t even realize there
were
bigger questions to ask. Most humans were simply content with existing and entertaining themselves with diversions until they died—fooled into thinking they were really alive when all along they had only bought into clever marketing. Mindlessly following everyone else
.

Not Nyah. She saw the world for what it was, and she was determined to cut her own path through it. There was a quiet intensity to her that he’d noticed long before they spoke that first time in Dr. Benton’s waiting room. It was impossible not to notice her; she’d turned heads every week and she hadn’t even realized it, thinking she was the only one doing the observing. She always sat in the far corner of the room, studying everyone else. She always played it calm and cool, her eyes flicking around the room, reading everyone like a book. Austin hadn’t thought of her as particularly beautiful, yet he was irresistibly drawn to her.

Now, he brushed a finger gently across her brow.
So different from everyone else.
And that’s why he could never get her out of his mind. Turning her away and not contacting her for so long had been one of the hardest things he’d ever done.

Nyah’s eyes snapped opened, startling Austin.

She blinked rapidly and looked around, struggling to get her bearings. Her pale-blue eyes were puffy and deep circles formed under them. She returned her attention to Austin. “What . . . what . . .?” she said.

“Welcome back,” he said, clenching her hand. “How’re you feeling?”

It took her a full thirty seconds to answer. “Terrible,” she finally said. She pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes. “Is my head supposed to feel like this?”

“Like a truck ran over it? That’s normal for the first couple of hours.” He held a penlight in front of her face. “Look straight ahead.”

She winced as he flicked the light from side to side, checking her pupil response.

“What happened?” she said. “Everything went black. I thought I was—”

“Passing out?”

“Dying,” she said.

He pocketed the light, then unclipped the oximeter from her finger and set it aside. “You panicked when I started the second hole. You were thrashing around so much I had to sedate you.”

She thought about that for a few beats. “How’d it go?”

“Well, you didn’t die.”

She frowned. “I’m serious.”

“There were no problems. You’re ready to go.”

“Is it . . .” She tentatively reached a hand toward the top of her head. “Can I touch it?”

“You can’t hurt them,” he said.

Nyah brought both hands to her scalp and hesitantly grazed her fingertips over her skull as if it were made of crackled glass on the verge of shattering. At first her eyes were wide, but she quickly became more comfortable with the feel of the implants under her fingers.

“You get used to them after a while,” he said. “The hardest part is not having hair. It gets chilly.” He handed her a red knit beanie. “You’ll need this.”

“I have holes in my head.” She said it more to herself than to Austin after taking the cap from him.

“Four of them.”

A wry smile formed on her face and she met his eyes. “Cool.” She planted both hands on the chair and swung her legs over the edge.

“Whoa, you might want to take it slow.” Austin helped her to unsteady feet. “You’ve been under awhile.”

She gripped his arm and looked around the room. “I’m good. What time is it?”

“Almost seven-thirty in the morning.” He watched her movements closely. She was lucid and moving surprisingly well. His recovery had taken nearly twelve hours. “You should take it easy for the next—”

“I’m fine. Really. Let’s get to work. Every minute counts.”

“You need rest.”

“What I need is coffee and some aspirin.” Her eyes went to the yellow legal pad sitting on the edge of the exam tray. “What’s that?”

He shrugged. “Nothing. I’ll take that . . .” He reached for it, but she got to it first.

Nyah flipped through the pad, turning page after page that had been doodled on and sketched over with a single symbol or varying sizes that repeated on no fewer than twenty pages:

“Wow,” she said, studying the pages. “You drew these? You really like fancy
O
’s.”

“It’s just a reminder,” he said.

“Reminder? And what’s this word on the top of the pages?
Deditio
?” She looked at me. “What’s it mean?”

“It’s Latin. It means unconditional surrender, letting go. Ever since Boston I can’t get it out of my mind. I draw it all the time. I know, it’s crazy.”

“Not any more than the way I count things,” she said. “And the symbol?”

“The man I told you about, Outlaw, wore a medallion fashioned that way.”

Nyah nodded and touched her fingers to the written word. “Deditio,” she said thoughtfully. “I like that.” She handed him the pad.

“Deditio: letting go. Remember it in the tank. It’ll serve you well.” He smiled. “We should probably calibrate your sensory array and begin mapping a neural profile for the database. If you’re up to it.”

“Of course.”

“Okay then. That’ll give us a baseline to work from once we start hacking.” He led her across the apartment to the control panel.

“Is that for me?” she asked, pointing to a spiderweb of cords clinging to one of the glass mannequin heads.

He lifted the set of wires and turned it in his hands. “I custom-fitted it to your TAP configuration while you were sedated. The dry fit was flawless, but we’ll need to get you in the tank and do a few diagnostic runs, make sure the data feeds are optimized with the system. You know, dial you in.”

“You want me in the tank?” Her eyes lit up. “Seriously?”

“If you’re not feeling—”

“I’m ready to go.”

“The sensory-deprivation tank is a bit overwhelming at first. We’ll go as slowly as you want.”

“Just try to keep up, okay?”

He smiled. “There are some shorts in the bathroom, brand new in the package. Some T-shirts, too. Go change and come back. I know it’s a bit awkward, but—”

“It’s fine,” she said, walking away. “Like going to the beach.”

“I’ll prep the tank,” he called after her, but she was already in the other room.

Nyah showed up five minutes later, barefoot and dressed in black shorts and a dark-blue sports bra. Standing in the doorway to the sensory-deprivation room, she looked like a chemotherapy patient dressed for an early morning jog.

“Didn’t need the T-shirt,” she explained. “Where do you want me?”

Austin stood at a nearby table making final adjustments to her headgear. He waved her toward him. “Over here. I have something for you.”

As she approached, he handed her an analog wristwatch: a simple waterproof timepiece with an hour and minute hand and a slowly sweeping second hand.

“What’s this for?” she said, turning it in her hand.

“Put it on. I’ve learned that time is a bit disorienting in the hacks. Each second in the hack feels like one minute of clock time outside of the tank. The watch will act as a mental cue, like a totem, to ground your awareness. If you find yourself losing track of how long you’ve been in the hack, just look at your watch. It’ll show you how much clock time has passed here in the tank.”

She strapped it on and tilted her wrist toward her. “One minute in the hack is an hour of real time here?”

“Clock time, I call it, and yes. Roughly,” he said. “Assuming it works the same for you as it does me. Now let’s get you plugged in.”

“Hardwired, you mean,” she said. “You’ve got to use the right terminology.”

He chuckled. “Right.”

“See, I pay attention.”

She walked over to him and he forced himself to concentrate on the headgear. You’d never realize how curvy she was, under all the baggy clothing she usually wore.

He cleared his throat and turned toward her, then carefully lifted the bundle of sensors to her head, aligning each with the gleaming taps on her skull before snapping them into place. “Too tight?” he asked.

“Nope. Feels good.”

“You’re sure you’re okay with this?”

“You sound like my mom,” she said. “Stop asking.”

He went to the tank and lifted its clamshell lid. The blue light from inside spilled into the dim room. He swept his hand toward it, bowed a little, and said, “After you.”

She crossed the floor and lifted one foot over the edge into the water. Then the other foot.

“Turn around and just sit down for a few minutes,” he said. “Get used to the feel of the water while I hardwire you.”

“It’s not warm,” she said. “I thought it would be. But it’s not cold either.”

“It’s temperature sensation neutral. Matching ambient and core body temperatures tricks your body into forgetting itself by removing sensory awareness.”

Her gaze moved from one side of the pod to the other. “How’s it work?”

He reached past her to six thin black cables that entered the pod through a one-inch access hole on the side. At the end of each was a threaded cylinder made of titanium. One at a time, he carefully pulled each wire closer and coupled it with the headgear.

He pointed to two of the wires. “These cables are the interface, both input and output. They output your biofeedback data to the computer for monitoring. The sensors in your headgear are highly sensitive and pick up your electromagnetic brain activity, all of it.”

“What’s the input?”

“These,” he said, indicating the other cords. “Laser pulses delivered via the fiber optics I installed in your skull. They’re targeted to specific regions of your brain so the light pulses will stimulate neural activity in loops, which the system will create from your brain-wave readings. By increasing the frequency we can prolong specific neural signatures.”

“Hacking the brain.” She drew a deep breath. “Right.”

His attention lingered on her. “Almost ready. We’ll do a simple run-through to get a reading of your baseline neural activity and responses to each stage of the experience. Everything will be an abbreviated version of a typical experiment. I’m setting it for a fifteen second hack. Our objective here is to test your body’s initial response and what phenomena, if any, you experience.”

She nodded. “Got it.”

“Don’t be disappointed if nothing happens the first few times. It took dozens of trials and stimuli combinations before I experienced my first hack.”

She gave him a thumbs-up.

Austin connected the last of the sensors and slipped a loop of clear plastic tube over her head, resting it over her ears. He placed the two prongs of the oxygen tube into her nostrils. “During the first stages this will feed you with oxygen. Once we’re ready for the Kick, the compound will come through the airflow system.”