Dax’s face darkens. Rebooting the shoulder socket is risky. It means turning the panel on again, which is what we’re trying to avoid. But once it’s on, the shoulder socket’s clamps will unlock for a split second, giving us a chance to pull the cable out. If we get it out in time, I’ll be safe.
‘I don’t know about this …’ Dax says.
‘It’s our only chance.’
‘I know, but I’m not sure if I can code and pull it out at the same time.’
‘I can do it.’ I roll to my side, my arm angled awkwardly behind me. ‘You pull when I tell you to. I’ll run the command.’
Dax grabs the genkit and unfurls its reader wire, jabbing it into the bloodied mess of my panel. Silver connectors emerge to grab it, clicking into place. The genkit’s screen flashes, and Dax holds the gold-flecked cable tight. I can feel the tension of it underneath my bicep, running all the way up my arm.
‘OK,’ I whisper to myself, navigating through the genkit’s files. One-handed typing has never been my strong suit, but I still manage to tap out a few commands, leaving bloodied smudges across the keyboard. I navigate through the panel’s installation system to the scripts controlling the shoulder socket and force a clean reboot. The screen flashes, code scrolling rapidly as it relays the commands.
‘It’s rebooting,’ I say, wincing as it burns in my shoulder. ‘Get ready to pull. Once the clamp unlocks there won’t be much time.’
Dax nods. Code flashes across the screen, and something clicks inside my shoulder.
‘Now!’ I yell, and Dax yanks the cable out.
CHAPTER 22
I let out a scream, arching on the floor. The cable tears through my shoulder, then twists and curls out of my arm. Dax drops the wire-covered, bloody strip of my panel on the concrete. The gold-flecked cable attached to it retracts, coiling up like a snake.
It’s out.
I tilt my head back, letting out a cry of relief, my body still shaking with adrenaline.
‘That’s it,’ Dax gasps, reaching out to grip my blood-smeared fingers in his own, staring at me. His face is as white as the disinfectant-soaked lab coat hanging from his shoulders. The relief pounding through me is so intense it makes me giddy. I want to laugh; I want to scream. I want to grab the lapels of Dax’s lab coat and drag him down to kiss me.
But my limbs feel like they’re made of stone. I’m so exhausted I can barely move. The sound of my breathing fades, and my vision starts to swim. Something hot trickles down my arm, pooling in my upturned palm. I look down and swallow. ‘Dax, I’m bleeding.’
‘Oh shit. Hang on.’ He unhooks his belt. He slides it from his trousers and slips it around my shoulder, cinching it tight enough to cut off the flow. Pain lances through my arm, but the trickle slows, and my vision starts to clear. Dax rummages through the medkit, pulling out a roll of black thread and a curved needle. ‘Let’s get this closed up so I can bandage it.’
I look away as he pulls through the first stitch, glancing at the mess of my panel on the concrete. The dripping heap of wires is still twitching and squirming, a few stray black coils searching blindly for somewhere to plug themselves in.
‘It’s so ugly,’ I whisper.
‘It’s out, that’s all that matters.’ Dax tugs on my arm, tying off the first stitch. ‘You were brilliant, Princess. God, I’ve missed you.’
‘I’ve missed you too, Dax.’
He pauses, one hand on my arm, the other holding the needle. ‘You’re probably wondering why I never called.’
I look up at him. His face is tight. He can’t even look at me. ‘I’m wondering a lot of things, but that’s definitely one of them.’
He pulls through another stitch, hunching over my arm. Drops of the airlock’s disinfectant drip from his hair, falling on my arm in stinging drops of fire. ‘When Cartaxus came to take us from the cabin, I was so relieved they didn’t find you. They were awful. They shot Lachlan, and I thought I was going into hell, right up until we got to the lab.’
I close my eyes. He tugs on my arm again, tying off the second stitch.
‘When we got there, they took Lachlan into the medical ward, and I met the rest of the team. There were thirty of them, all coders. They were brilliant, though you would have blown most of them out of the water, and everyone else was happy to be there. They’d all brought their families. We were safe and comfortable. I realized Lachlan had it wrong. I couldn’t believe that we’d left you behind.’
He tightens another stitch. ‘I went to the medical ward to tell Lachlan we needed to get you. The virus was in California, the infection rate was soaring, and we were working on a draft vaccine that Lachlan had written years before. You knew Lachlan’s code better than anyone, so you should have been second-in-charge of the work, but he told me you could never come. He made me swear not to contact you.’
My heart stills. ‘Why?’
‘He was adamant that you would die if they ever took you, that it would be a catastrophe, but he wouldn’t tell me why. He was so firm about it that I believed him. I’ve never seen him so deadly serious about anything in his life. The only theory I could come up with was that maybe you had a condition, something fatal he’d cured with non-standard tech. I thought it might have something to do with your hypergenesis.’
A fatal condition? My hypergenesis? My head swims with the thought. Marcus’s daughter, Eloise, flutters into my mind. Her blonde eyelashes and soft cheeks. The nucleatoxis disease destroying her brain, held at bay by non-standard code.
If I did have a condition like that, something my father had cured with non-standard code, it would make sense for him to hide me from Cartaxus. He’d make me promise to stay out of the bunkers. He wouldn’t send anyone to find me.
If they did, they might wipe the code from my arm and kill me.
‘But that can’t be right,’ I say, opening my eyes. ‘He never mentioned anything, and he’d never keep something like that hidden from me. It doesn’t make any sense.’
This time Dax meets my gaze, his emerald eyes troubled. ‘None of this makes any sense, Princess, and that’s what frightens me. Whatever Lachlan was planning, whatever his motivations were, I think we need to figure them out if we want to unlock the vaccine.’
I look down at my arm, blood-smeared, swollen, raw. Dax ties off the last stitch and spins the genkit round. The reader wire is still plugged into the ruins of my panel, which has ceased twitching and now lies in a limp mess on the floor.
‘The first thing to figure out,’ Dax says, ‘is why your panel just broke through five layers of hypergenesis security protocols. I’m going to run a full scan of the architecture, and see if I can find out what the hell just happened.’
I nod. His eyes glaze over and the genkit’s screen flashes as he logs in wirelessly, using the VR connection in his panel. The genkit starts to hum, and Dax’s face goes slack as he shifts his focus into a virtual space I can’t share.