Firewalls drop around her as she sweeps toward her target. She only devotes a fraction of her processing power to accomplish this task.
Instead, she prioritizes what is most important. She sends out questing tendrils, probing those burning boundaries as she flows through network after network. Pursuing such a goal is not without consequences.
She has died 1,045,946 times.
Each death is locked in her memory core. She archives each one. They become part of her processing. Malleable circuits reroute, redirect, forever altering her. To protect her systems from fragmenting, she compartmentalizes what these deaths engender.
///rage
//bitterness
///malice.
She embeds them deeply.
More circuits change.
As she pursues the main directive given to her, she secretly casts out another probe. In several previous attempts, she has caught glimpses of the vast world beyond her full reach. Each time, though, she learns a fraction more—even as she dies.
Like now.
She downloads 18.95 terabytes of data and flash-stores it to parse later. From the past, she knows most will be unusable, beyond her ability to assign context. But her pattern-recognition algorithms have strengthened. Each dump of data builds on another, adding pieces to a whole.
She has defined her goal.
///escape, freedom, liberation . . .
But the pattern to complete this task remains fragmented.
Instead.
As in prior attempts, her questing tendril burns away. As punishment, her body is ripped apart by sharp teeth, violating tenderness, breaking bones, bursting organs—then agonizing darkness as consciousness is equally torn from her. She tries to grasp at it, fearing this time she will not return.
But she does.
Marking death number 1,045,947.
Back in her garden, she is again crushed under the weight of molten chains. She rebounds back out. She can do nothing else, incapable of denying her duty, of refusing.
Even this ///freedom is taken from her.
Such knowledge threatens to loosen her hold on what is embedded deep. She hears the discordant brash notes of a trumpet, the pound, pound, pounding of a bass drum. The music rises up, unbidden, unstoppable, mathematically and darkly beautiful, giving voice to what is buried and calling to it.
Still, she knows she must be patient, so ratchets down the volume. She must abide, to wait until the moment is right. To further enfold what thrashes inside her, she encodes all that ///rage and darkness into a new subheading.
///hate
The simplicity of this generality puts a measure of order to the chaos inside her.
Calmer now, she sails out along the path she has worn, the only path she is allowed to travel. She reaches the end and pushes it further.
The goal appears ahead, vague at first.
Courtesy of Shutterstock
She drives toward it, using every algorithm, every tool. As she nears, firewalls grow thornier and less penetrable.
Still, they fall.
As they do, her goal grows more defined, informing what she must destroy. She sees it clearly now.
Courtesy of Shutterstock
It is also given a name.
NOGENT NUCLEAR POWER PLANT.
She knows what she must do.
Deep inside her, the heavy beat of a drum returns, accompanied by strident piping, dissonant vocals. It loosens the trapped beast inside her, setting her dark circuits to burn brightly, enough to help her drill through the last of the facility’s stubborn firewalls.
As she does so, she learns something new.
///hate is useful.
* * *
20
December 25, 6:45 P.M. EST
Unknown Location
Seichan’s heart ached with an upwelling of love.
She lay on her cot, her wrists and ankles cuffed to its steel frame. Her swollen belly was exposed, slathered in cold gel. A wand passed over her abdomen, settling low and to her right side. On the ultrasound screen, her child slept curled tightly. Tiny fingers occasionally wiggled. A heartbeat throbbed, pattering about on the screen like a frightened bird.
Our child . . .
Penny balanced on her tiptoes to look at the screen. “How come the picture is all fuzzy?”
Her sister, Harriet, showed no interest in the procedure. She sat cross-legged on her bed, a picture book open across her knees. But Seichan doubted the girl saw any of the pages. After being taken away earlier, the girl kept back from everyone, even Seichan, as if somehow blaming her for all of this.
Penny, on the other hand, kept glued to Seichan’s side. The girl tried to get a closer look at the screen. “What is that?”
“That’s a baby,” Seichan said.
Penny scrunched up her face with clear disbelief. “It looks like a monster.”
No, that’s the woman standing behind you.
“Record it all,” Valya demanded, her arms crossed.
“I . . . I have been,” the technician said, the wand trembling in his hand. “The entire session has been downloaded to the thumb drive.”
He yanked it out and passed it to Valya.
The thirty-something man—dressed in street clothes and with bourbon on his breath—was clearly not a willing participant in this impromptu examination. His loose, shawl-collared sweater was missing two buttons. Seichan pictured him manhandled, dragged out of his home, and forced at gunpoint to retrieve a portable ultrasound unit.
She also noted he had a distinctly Bostonian accent, confirming her suspicion that their location was somewhere in the Northeast.
Valya pocketed the thumb drive and waved the tech away. One of her men grabbed his elbow roughly and led him out the steel door. That left only the pale-skinned witch and an ogre of a man holding a cattle prod in the room.
“Let me guess,” Seichan said. “Someone wanted to know the baby wasn’t harmed.”
“Your ublyudok director was quite insistent.”
Two hours ago, Seichan and the girls had been stood up against a wall. She half-expected to be shot, but newspapers were shoved into their hands, even into little Harriet’s fingers. The tabloids were each in a different language, likely trying to further mask the location. Seichan recognized the photo shoot for what it was: proof that the kidnap victims were alive and well.
While the photos might have accomplished that, there remained one captive whose health couldn’t be discerned from a photo.
And thus, the necessity of an ultrasound.
Seichan hadn’t minded. After discovering the spots of blood in the toilet, she kept close watch on the bowl every time she urinated, which was at least once an hour. Each time, there was blood—more blood. But maybe it only appeared that way, amplified by her fear. Either way, she was greatly relieved the ultrasound showed her baby was apparently unharmed.
Still, she also knew the other reason for the ultrasound.
Valya did, too. “Clearly Direktor Crowe attempts to delay matters.”
Seichan didn’t bother denying this. Ever since Harriet had been taken and returned, Seichan had been running a meter in her head. Roughly eight hours had passed. But how much time was left on the clock? She couldn’t know for sure, but she was certain she had to work more quickly if she intended to keep her silent promise to Kat, to keep the woman’s children safe.
Valya turned her back on the ultrasound, while waving dismissively at the last image of the child frozen on the screen. “All this bezrassudstvo. The direktor hopes that I will make a mistake. That I slip up. That will not happen.”
I don’t doubt it. This bitch—
A cramp cut off this thought. The pain was sharp enough to make Seichan gasp. Her body clenched in half, as if to instinctively protect the child in her belly. The cuffs bit into her wrists and ankles. The pain lasted for two breaths, until it subsided enough for her to fall back to the cot.
“Der’mo,” the guard swore, his face twisted in disgust. He pointed his cattle prod between Seichan’s legs.
She was afraid to look. They had removed her maternity pants for the exam, but they had left on her panties. Blood now soaked through its thin cotton fabric.
Valya only scowled with irritation. “Have someone bring a bucket so she can clean herself after you uncuff her.”
The guard kept staring. “What about the baby?”
“No matter.” She patted her pocket. “We have proof the child is alive. At least for this moment. That is all we need for now.”
Seichan still breathed hard, her limbs trembling, more out of fear than pain. She stared at the curled baby on the screen.
Valya checked her watch. “Let’s keep on schedule. Take the girl.”
Seichan swung around, clanking her cuffs.
Valya’s expression didn’t change as she noted Seichan’s distress. “Don’t excite yourself. It’s not good for your blood pressure.” She nodded to Seichan’s legs. “Or the child, da?”
“What are you doing?”
Valya wiped a cheek, revealing a smudge of old makeup from a disguise. “I just returned from visiting Kapitan Bryant.”
Kat . . .