So why the hell is he here?
Doubt has taken hold inside me, a fire that first sparked when Cole told me that the Skies hacked Cartaxus and destroyed the vaccine’s code. That’s ridiculous. I’m probably the best coder the Skies have, and I’m nowhere near good enough to pull off a hack like that. But if not the Skies, then who? Part of me feels like Cartaxus is playing some larger game that I can’t yet grasp. All I know is that my father is dead, and he left a message for Cole.
I saw the proof of that, at least. I held it in my hands.
What I have to decide now is what to do with Cole. My eyes glide across the gleaming handcuffs on the living-room table. For all I know, he’s waiting for me to unlock the vaccine so he can drag me back to Cartaxus, and they can control the code again. I’ve spent the last two years hiding from people like him. How could my father possibly expect me to work with him now?
‘Are you ready?’
I jump as Cole walks back from the kitchen with my little battered genkit in his hands. ‘Where did you get that?’
‘It was on the floor.’ He hands it to me. ‘I moved it out of the way when I brought my gear in. I’m guessing you’ll need it to get into my arm.’
I take the genkit carefully, a wild idea sparking in my mind. This machine holds backups of every piece of code I’ve ever written. Every algorithm, every firewall-busting script I’ve developed with the Skies. But that’s not all it holds. There are viruses in here, malware that can be triggered remotely, with a vocal command. If I can dump one of those viruses into Cole’s panel, it’ll give me a chance at getting away from him if he turns on me.
Maybe that’s what my father wanted – not for me to work with Cole, but to fight him. To control him. To hold my own against this living, breathing weapon.
‘Are you ready to do this?’ Cole asks.
I nod swiftly, turning away. ‘Yeah, I’m ready. Let’s go down to the lab.’
A set of dank concrete steps at the back of the house leads down to the laboratory my father built in the basement. The motion sensors at the door trip as I step through, and the ancient fluorescent bars on the ceiling blink to life.
It’s a mess down here. Sheaths of musty paper lie spilled across the floor, a testament to my father’s love of old-fashioned notes. The black lab counter runs the length of the room, cluttered with dirty beakers and metal canisters of proteins ready to be laser-coded. A pile of broken petri dishes and test-tubes fills one corner, and the frayed wiring of a disembowelled genkit takes up most of the floor.
It’s a minefield of broken glass and toxic chemicals, just the way it’s always been. It’s my favourite place in the cabin.
‘This place is a death trap,’ Cole says, scanning the room.
I nod to the broom hanging on the far wall. ‘I’m going to need a few minutes to get ready. Feel free to clean up.’
He raises an eyebrow at me and leans against the door-frame. ‘Not a chance, Catarina.’
I smile, walking to the counter, and set my genkit down. Its screen is dim, cracked in one corner and mended badly with duct tape. It’s just a basic laptop model: the kind of thing someone would buy if they were getting into coding but didn’t want to spend too much money. The higher-end genkits can take up an entire room, designed to run calculations on every possible permutation of the human genome. My genkit has a screen and keyboard, which most people use when they’re learning before upgrading to the smoother, faster VR interface. I tried hooking up my panel’s low-tech graphics card to the genkit’s VR stream a dozen times, but all it did was crash my tech. One day I’ll find a way to upgrade my panel’s processors, but until then I’m stuck using a basic, clunky, entry-level genkit.
A slow, broken, taped-up genkit that I love with all my heart.
The screen glows blue as it boots up. I glance over my shoulder at Cole and run a quick scan through my files for a virus I can hide in his arm. Most of them are for attacking computer systems, but a handful are straight-up malicious gentech code. Biocryptic warfare. I wrote them after the outbreak, while the world was going to hell and I was alone and terrified. The only weapon I had was my father’s rifle, and I barely knew how to use it.
But I knew how to code.
A forty-kilobyte Trojan catches my eye – a command that should short-circuit Cole’s wiring and knock him out if I say a trigger word: recumbentibus. It’s perfect. Small enough to slip past his security scanner, and it’ll give me time to run the hell away from him if it comes to that.
I pull out the genkit’s I/O wire, a three-foot-long cable coiled into the back of the device, and wave it at Cole. A chrome-plated, inch-long needle gleams on the end. ‘OK, soldier. Let’s get you jacked in.’
His shoulders tighten. ‘With a needle?’
‘Don’t be a baby. Give me your arm.’
He eyes the gleaming needle, shifting uncomfortably. He’s not alone in his discomfort – most people hate the wire. Panels can usually be updated or checked through their wireless connection, but there are some apps that need to be physically budded through a brand-new stream of nanites, and that’s where the wire comes in. Its needle tip is hollow, ready to send in a microscopic drop of saline teeming with nanites. Whenever I’m coding, I always use the wire. Hardwired connections are faster, and you don’t have to worry so much about electromagnetic interference.
Cole steps closer reluctantly, his gaze hovering on the duct tape holding the genkit’s screen in. ‘Are you sure this thing is safe?’
‘The machine is fine. It’s just old, and a little slow.’
He doesn’t look convinced. ‘And you’re sure you know what you’re doing?’
I stare at him. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was afraid, which is ridiculous coming from a man who could kill me in seconds with his bare hands.
At least, it would be ridiculous if I wasn’t planning on dumping a Trojan into his arm as soon as I get in.
‘Of course I know what I’m doing,’ I say. ‘How many times do I have to –’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ he says, cutting me off. ‘You’re a smart-ass Agatta, I get it. I still don’t think you’ll be able to get past the firewalls.’