Boss King and the Blade

Guard van, En-Route to Port August

Trixie

“Okay kids, I have the route programmed into the auto-drive” Trixie announced once they had left the outer reaches of Spitfield behind. “I am taking us on a roundabout route to Port August so we can avoid the major roads. That should keep us off any surveillance systems until we are close to the town”

“How long will it take to get there?” Melody asked her, watching the unfamiliar scenery race past the van’s windows. “I thought Port August was pretty close to Spitfield?”

“They are” Boss King piped up from the back, lounging sideways on the bench seat. “On a good day you can make the journey in under an hour”

“Have you been there before?” Melody enquired, twisting in her seat to look at the boy. “What’s it like?”

“I’ve only been once” he admitted. “Mama took me a few years ago for a shared holiday with some of our neighbours. We had rented a small shack on the beachfront, right up near the water. It was the first time I had ever seen the ocean and it was absolutely amazing”

“Did you go swimming in the ocean?” Melody demanded in an excited tone. “I’ve always wanted to swim under the open sky”

“No, I can’t swim” Boss King replied sadly. “There aren’t any swimming pools in the Hole and the closest canals in Spitfield are full of rubbish. Can you swim, Melody?”

The girl looked a bit too triumphant to Trixie’s eye when she nodded eagerly.

“Uh-huh!. All the Blades are taught to swim and climb, to drive a car and operate a kayak” she blurted. “It’s all in underground locations of course, because the Nest had to keep us hidden”

Her voice trailed away and Melody turned to face the front once more, silently contemplating the ribbon of cracked tarmac ahead.

“Not that it made any difference in the end” she added softly. “They found my home and destroyed it. I think I am the only who made it out of there alive”

Trixie could feel the hurt and loss within the young girl, radiating from her like a wall of cold ice. She wondered again at the motives of Archimedes and why he so violently destroyed the Nests he found.

“Melody, Boss King, I’m going to let the Dumb AI drive for a while” she announced. “I have a data crystal that may contain information on why Archimedes hunts down the Hive. Will you guys be Okay while I am deep diving?”

“Sure, we’ll be fine” Boss King assured her. He had unbuckled from the rear seat, squatting now in the narrow gap between the front seats. His hand was laid gently over Melody’s own, offering her what comfort he could. “Go find some answers for all of us”

“Copy that” Trixie acknowledged and fished the crystal from one of her many pockets. The van had a standard Police Auxiliary datapad built into the front dashboard, equipped with a crystal reader and extendable induction cables. She took the cable and let the magnetic lock attach to the outside of her right temple, just over the induction port concealed under her skin.

“This should only take a few minutes” she said, then opened her internal processor to the data stream.

=====

In the Stream

The world was a giant bowl, filled with glowing blocks of code and data spheres like a dessert made from jelly cubes and peeled grapes. Trixie’s consciousness dove into the mass of information, pushing herself deep into the dense mass. Files and programs flickered past as she swam deeper, each revealing a summary of the knowledge they contained. As she had suspected, so much that was stored was routine in nature, reports of shipments made and dispatched, of production in Pan City’s many factories, snippets of phone calls and messages that the AI deemed worth retaining.

At last she came to the base code that operated the crystal, the essential programming that determined how and where each piece of data would be sorted. She had found nothing more than the original files she examined the previous day. Elapsed time showed as eleven point nine Nanoseconds since she had connected her mind to the crystal.

“Where is the real data?” her enhanced brain thought to itself. “Which of these files hides the truth?”

Her quantum self sat at the very bottom of the enormous bowl, looking at the myriad spheres and cubes overhead. An imaginary hand of pure thought stroked the base code, engraved by ultra-fine lasers into the Ceramiglass crystal. She felt a bump of sorts, an irregularity in the code.

“Gotcha!” she exulted and bent her mind to the tiny bump, tracing electronic fingers over the flaw. It pulled open as she prised at it, a new cube of hidden code springing forth. The code glowed a malignant red and Trixie had barely time to register her error when everything went black.

=====

Trixie awoke, if that is the right word, to the sight of absolutely nothing. An emptiness that allowed no description, not even a colour that could be determined. A hand drifted into sight, attached to an arm clad in mottled grey and brown camouflage. It was remarkably familiar looking and it flexed as she focussed on it.

“Mine I guess” she decided. She tilted her head and saw she had a body, the same one she usually inhabited but in this case wearing a complete uniform of the Border Patrol. She hadn’t worn this uniform in over two years, not since she had been assigned as a Sniper to watch over the land border between Australia and the Zone.

With her usual care, she checked the rest of her body. There was a sensation of touch wherever her hands lay, yet it wasn’t like the real world. A simulation then, a virtual copy that the viral code had initiated.

“Abort program” she called out, hearing her voice as muffled like through layers of blankets. Nothing changed that she could perceive.

“End simulation!” she commanded. “Terminate search query!”

Still no change. She tried to access her internal time clock and found it had stopped at elapsed time of sixteen point three Nanoseconds.

“Bugger!” she swore. If her clock had stopped there was a good chance the viral code had gotten into her Quantum Processor, the very heart of her mind. Her software was compromised so she tried to effect a hard disconnect.

Her virtual right hand rose up and clamped at the correct spot over her temple, then yanked savagely away. In the real world, she fervently hoped her hand had just disconnected the induction cable from her head.

“That won’t work, Ms Smith” a voice told her rather smugly. Trixie looked up, or maybe it was down, to see a slender man with blonde hair and fine features watching her intently. The edges of his blue-green eyes crinkled as he smiled in a self-satisfied way.

“I told them you would fall for the bait” he continued. “You are far too persistent to give up after finding so little data in the crystal”

“You knew I would deep dive into the data, so you hid a subversion routine in the crystal” Trixie realised in despair. “I was too clever for my own good” She examined the face of her unexpected companion with interest, seeing a similarity to someone dear to her.

“If you are trying to copy the look of my boss, that’s not close enough” she scolded him. “You are too tall and too old, and the face is too broad. The Jericho’s are way more handsome than what you have created there”

The man laughed at her, his voice less muffled than it had been. For that matter, her own voice was sounding clearer and stronger, as if whatever barriers were between them were being eroded away.

“Don’t you recognise me, Guard Unit B-Zero-Three?” he smirked. “You and your siblings only exist because of my work. The Jericho’s are but copies of my flesh, a creation to prove my techniques worked”

“Alexander Hargreaves?” Trixie breathed out incredulously. “You died years ago, killed along with your wife in a laboratory explosion!”

“The one and the same” the man agreed easily. “Not in the flesh of course, since we are in a shared simulation, but I assure you that in the real world my body is exactly as you see it now”

“It’s possible you are really Hargreaves” Trixie admitted, then her expression hardened. “But it doesn’t matter to me. Here and now you are attempting to subvert my core processor, making me into some kind of slave to your whims! I won’t let myself be controlled that way ever again!”

“And how do you plan to stop me, Trixie” Hargreaves breathed out in a menacing tone. “Your core is nearly breached, your mind is about to be laid bare to my desires!”

“I’m sorry kids” she replied, hoping that somehow they heard her pitiful apology. “I can’t let them take control of me and hurt you”

It was only a simulation, yet she felt tears fall from her natural eye, running down a cheek that was only software.

“Alpha-Bravo-Niner-Three!” she sang out, her voice loud and clear and pure. “Execute Core Destruct!”

The man who looked like Alexander Hargreaves clapped his hands together, applauding her noble self-sacrifice.

“It’s far too late for that, dear Trixie” he gloated. “Regardless, I am impressed at what a remarkable creation you have become. It will be a wonderful opportunity to see you take down the Archimedes Network from within, one of Jericho-Three’s most trusted agents working for the Hive instead!”

“What about the children?” Trixie asked, despair filling her. “You could just let them go”

“Sadly, they are too deeply involved in this now” Hargreaves said with flat emotionless calm. “The girl has Manifested far too late to be salvageable to our cause and the boy is simply a nuisance. I’ll have you kill them once the integration is complete”

“Nooooo!!!” Trixie roared and tried to lunge for the man. He let her stumble through unseen barriers, her movements as slow as a fly trapped in honey. She nearly made it, one hand reaching to his smug face with clawed fingers, trying to end him.

“TRIXIE!” screamed a girl’s voice and light flooded her existence.

=====

Guard van, En-Route to Port August

She opened her eyes to see a meter long blade of oiled darkness pulsing barely a hand span from her nose. It had pierced the driver’s window beside her, then Melody recalled it with a gasp into her arm.

“Are you alright?” the girl whimpered and Trixie saw her broad strong hands were close to Melody’s throat. She relaxed her hands and reared back, seeing the shocked expressions of Melody and Boss King watching her closely. A short length of cable dangled close to her cheek, the end severed by something incredibly sharp.

“You saved me, Melody” Trixie answered with a throat hoarse and raw. “If you hadn’t cut the connection, they would have taken me over completely”

She disconnected the induction cable from her temple, laying the short piece on top of the dashboard. The datapad still had the corrupted crystal in the reader, a weapon more deadly to Trixie than anything she had encountered before. On an impulse she took it from the reader and opened the side window, flinging the traitorous device into the passing bushland.

“What the hell was all that about?” Boss King demanded. “One minute you’re all twitchy, refusing to come out of the diving trance, then you’re trying to kill Melody!”

“It was the Hive” Trixie tried to explain. “They suckered me into diving on that crystal, making me think it was one from the Records Hall. It had a hidden viral code, one designed to subvert someone like me”

“Wow, they must have put some serious planning into that” Boss King whistled appreciatively. “I thought they only wanted Melody, but it sounds like you were in their sights too”

“Yeah, I think you are right” Trixie said slowly. Her mind was still reeling from the experience, trying to piece together a bunch of facts that weren’t quite lining up. “I’ll need to think about this some more, but for now we need to reach Port August sooner than later”.

“Why is that?” Melody wanted to know. “I thought we needed to stay out of sight on the way there?”

“That was before they tried to hack my mind” Trixie responded. She reached to the vehicle controls, disabling the auto-drive and taking the steering wheel into her hands. With quick motions she checked the vehicle systems and entered some rapid commands.

“The code took control of the van’s datapad too” she continued. “I’ve disabled it now, but the unit sent our current location to whomever was hacking me. They’ll know where we are and it won’t take them long to block the available roads”

“Can you call your boss, that Avatar guy, to send us help?” Boss King asked her.

“No, there is a chance that may draw the attention of Archimedes to us. I’m still not sure of his motives here, about why he is so ruthless in wiping out people from the Nests”

“Maybe he just hates us” Melody said sadly. “We were made to be his enemies after all, so hating us would be justified”

“Archimedes has his faults, that can’t be denied” Trixie replied. “But he does not hate anyone. That is not in his nature, I have discovered that myself. What he is at the very core is determined and willing to be ruthless to achieve his goals. If he chooses to destroy us, it won’t be because of any emotion but rather pure logic”

Boss King snorted in disdain and clapped a hand on Trixie’s shoulder.

“Thanks. I feel happier knowing that killing us won’t be anything personal!”

“You’re welcome” Trixie answered with a grin. “Now let me call someone that can help us. I reckon he owes my boss some favours, so I am going to cash one in”