Casimir Hypogean: Chapter Six
(Catch up on previous chapters here)
Chapter Six
Ryg started cursing again as one portion of his screen, the window following Sif and Hex, went dead blank. He couldn’t reach them through their PUDIs either. But his progs were running. Whatever had jammed the Wires and stopped communication wasn’t jamming up the feed that ran through the hard cables up to the array on the roof and down into the hidden government black box below.
Hex and Sif can take care of themselves. Ryg had his own job to do. He hadn’t known what kind of programs he’d need to help him get into the servers, so he’d loaded the chip with the works. Now he streamlined it, pushing his best trackers and code-catchers to the front, searching for the access points.
To anyone on the outside, the data flowing past Ryg’s eyes would have looked like numbers with the occasional strange characters woven in, but to him it was another world. There! When the BioCore servers had been rigged to piggyback on the government array, they’d left open doors into the servers. It was a clean, efficient job and Ryg almost wanted to meet the code writers who’d done this.
Stop admiring someone else’s work and do your own, he told himself. He tripped the keyword hunters he’d laced his progs with and cued them up to compile the data onto the right hard drive, the one that Tommy would swap out as soon as Nico and Kadin cut the power.
Sitting alone in his room, Ryg bit his lip and focused in. His friends were all out of contact. Beyond his control. Easier to contain what he could and let the rest go. He was almost in, almost there. The progs were copying things from the BioCore servers as well, but that would just help confuse anyone looking for a trail. And who knew? That information might come in handy or be sellable at some point. He had things perfectly under control.
Then his screens went black.
* * *
Nico scanned the help document on the console in front of her and brought up the right control screen. The tech, currently sweating this out tied to his chair, had logged in when he’d arrived at work, which made her job a lot easier. But she needed another code to open the override box on the wall behind him.
“Alim?” she said softly, guessing at his name from the user log on the console. “I need a code to open the override.”
“Don’t you tell them nothing,” the fat guard said. He was sweating to and kept posturing with verbal threats as though his words were scare Kadin and her away. The man was called Combs by his partner, as in “shut the hell up, Combs” and “for Loria’s sake, shut the damn hell up, Combs”.
Kadin glared at him and threatened to backhand him again. Combs already had a fat lip from a gentle tap a little earlier. He shut up again, glaring, looking like a fat grey sack with big dark circles of sweat stinking up his creased uniform.
“Alim?” Nico didn’t want to seem in a hurry, but time was passing and they needed to throw the switch soon.
He glanced at the two guards and then, sighing as though the building had just come down onto his chest, he gave her the code. The door of the override box slid open, revealing a bright red lever with a bunch of warning text written too small to make out from a distance.
“Red, of course.” Nico smiled at Kadin. “Get the door.”
Kadin opened the door and blocked it with his body. Nico waited for his nod and then grasped the lever. With the jammer on, it was impossible to know if they were running exactly on schedule, but the timing was close. Seconds shouldn’t matter.
“Good night,” she said, and flipped the switch.
* * *
Tommy felt the humming within the walls die out as the tunnel he lay in went eerily silent. Things were going exactly to plan.
“Booyah, go time,” he said and rolled up to his feet. He shook out stiff limbs and worked his head around to loosen up his neck muscles. Then he picked up the heavy pry bar and worked the door open. With the electronic locks disengaged, it was easy work. Just an understanding of physics, a little applied pressure, and bam. He was in.
Tommy left the pry bar in the doorway, just in case they had the timings off and the place tried to lock down on him. The room was a reinforced, repurposed utility room. The servers stood in a single bank in the middle, with heavy fans venting out into the old sewer tunnel. Those fans were one of the things that had tipped Kadin and his team off to where this box might be.
Tommy slipped the hard drive out of its case in his satchel and counted down the banks until he found the seventh. He was pretty sure Ryg had meant seventh from the top, anyway. The room had a lot of shielding and his PUDI wasn’t cooperating even with the power out. No way to check, so he’d just go with his first instinct. Seven from the top.
The drive slid free easily and Tommy replaced it with the duplicate. Someone would notice the replacement at some point, but he doubted anyone checked on this place often. There hadn’t even been distinct footprints in the settled dust outside the door. The replacement drive was generic, bought with stolen credits, and untraceable.
Tommy tucked the new drive into his satchel and grinned. Let them try to come for him, come beg for their dirty little secrets. On this drive would be information about the upcoming nominations. Info someone would pay dearly to have. He licked his thin lips, tasting the synthetic fibers of the mask.
A vibration, then a low hum were his only warning. The power kicked in, more quickly than even his fastest calculation.
“Crap on a stick.” Tommy dove for the closing door, getting his hand on the pry bar before it shut. The heavy steel inched open as he worked it with the bar, but red alarm lights had come on and time was running short.
Tommy wedged his body through the opening, the steel crushing in on his thin chest and hips. Almost. Almost. His body made it through but the door crunched shut on his arm, the pry bar keeping the locks from engaging fully. Tommy screamed and scrabbled at the door with is free hand, finally gripping the pry bar enough to force a space so he could yank free.
His arm was crushed, the flesh purpled and bleeding and his fingers wouldn’t move when he tried. Pain lanced through him. No time, no time at all. He left the pry bar and bolted down the tunnel, hugging his arm to him. Somewhere behind, he heard the telling whir of a security drone, but Tommy didn’t look back.
* * *
With their PUDIs jammed, Hex and Sif had to communicate with gestures. Any sound would give away their positions to the Hunter-killer drones. The heat and noise of the server banks helped disguise them for the moment at least and the positioning the of the servers meant the drones couldn’t come in over their heads.
Hex caught Sif’s eye and she made a tiny motion indicating she was going to engage to the right. Sif had out her longer knife now, but Hex wasn’t sure how much good it would do against the tiny balls of metal darting through the room. His gun would at least disable them, if he didn’t miss.
So I won’t miss. No problem at all. He took tiny breaths and waited for Sif to move. She was quick and her movement would distract the drones. He had to let her go out there.
When the government had been experimenting with making quick humans, the genies, for a controllable, replaceable workforce for outside the dome, the initial trials hadn’t gone well. Ryg was a model from one of those earlier attempts. Sif was the last and best of the attempts, before the government shut the program down in favor of just using illegal children and captured criminals. Too much money, too much expense, too many ethical issues.
But not before the Sifs had been created. Assassins, lovers, guards. Playthings for the elite. Smarter, stronger, faster. Genetic masterpieces utilizing the full majesty of the human DNA code mixed with something more. Sif had never told Hex what that something was. He knew she had issues, and that she got something from the creepy doctor Lucien Graemes. But he never asked her what. Sif had always made it crystalline clear that she took care of herself. No questions.
So he didn’t argue with her mimed plan, just gave a slight nod that he knew she’d pick up even in the red-tinged shadows of the server banks. The grip of the eletro pistol was smooth and almost soft in his hand, the rubber warming to his nervous hold.
Abruptly, the hum of the servers died away and the sudden silence hovered thick and strange around him. The lights had gone out as well and for a moment Hex couldn’t see at all. He jerked his night vision goggles down over his eyes and jammed the wire into his PUDI by feel.
The world turned to green shadows and Hex threw himself aside just in time as a shiny greenish ball hurtled toward his location, a fine dart pinging off the server framework where his head had been a moment before. Guided more by instinct than reason, Hex brought his pistol up and squeezed the trigger.
The drone hit the concrete floor with a satisfying thunk. One down.
“Program chip,” Sif’s voice said over the re-activated subvocals. The power was out, which meant, thank the gods, that jammer was down.
Hex slid around the side of the servers and felt for the right spot with his free hand. Another thunk told him Sif had found a target and disabled another drone.
“Got it,” Hex said. His fingers found the chip and he yanked it out. Too late to leave without a trace, but there was no point in getting sloppy and making it easier to trace them.
Green glinting metal and the flicker of a bright patch of light caught his eye. Hex ducked behind another bank of servers, working his way toward the door.
“Are you guys all right?” Ryg had rebooted the connection now that the jammer was gone. “What’s going on?”
“Hunter-killer drones,” Hex said, shooting down another one. Sif materialized from the darkness and leapt up, nearly to the ceiling. She kicked off the wall in a half-sideways jump and slammed another drone into the floor as it came around the servers, just ahead of where Hex stood.
“What?” Ryg said something else but the high pings of servers rebooting and the renewal of power to the jammer somewhere in this room cut him off. It was wire silence again.
Hex quickly disabled the night vision before the renewed lights could blind him fully. He sprinted hard for the door, but Sif got there first, slamming it open and leaping up to spike another drone into the hard concrete. They ran, not trying to speak, keeping low in the corridor and making for where he remembered the stairs should be.
The jammer had a range on it and Hex could have shouted with joy when his PUDI started connecting again and the maps of this stupid place came up, pinged by Ryg who was clearly waiting for the two of them to come back online.
Sif shoved him aside into a wall and Hex grit his teeth at the bruising force as he felt a dart skim past his hair. The whir of more drones filled the hallway. Too many.
“We’re screwed here,” he told Ryg. “We need a better exit. These things’ll be able to go anywhere we can.”
“Can you shut them out? Get to a door?”
“We’ll just be trapped and they can probably come through the vents.”
“Working on it,” Ryg responded.
They hit the stairway doors and Sif kicked it in. It was a fire door, heavy but on hinges, with a safety bar that gave easily to Sif’s insistence. Hex was on the first step when he heard the door close behind him and the thunk, thunk, thunk of drones hitting hard surfaces. He jerked around, gun ready.
Sif wasn’t behind him. The stairwell was empty for the moment and beyond the closed door he knew she was fighting the Hunter-killers. Alone.
“Move,” her voice ground out over the sub vocals, a soft burr inside his head.
She’d catch up. He’d just get in her way. Probably. It was better this way, safer for both of them. It’s better, like that makes it easier, yeah.
Hex holstered his gun and made for the roof, taking the stairs two at a time. This stairwell opened into another hallway, leading to more stairs and finally to a roof access ladder. He came out, half expecting to find the Grey Guard or at least some security drones waiting. Wind rushed across the dark surface of the roof, rustling through the leaves of a small garden just in front of him.
Hex waited for a slow count and then took off across the roof, scrubbing his face clean of the paint as it started to rain. It wasn’t curfew yet, if he could make it down to street level after going across a few buildings, he’d be safe enough getting back to Ijipe before the city shut down.
“See you,” he murmured to Sif across the wires. There was no response. Refusing to think about it too much, Hex headed home, his face set and grim. Time for that discussion with Ryg.