This Mortal Coil (This Mortal Coil #1)

The mother nods, her face pale. ‘We can’t go back down, sir. It’s against protocol. We need to be quarantined.’

Cole sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. He grabs a panel in the elevator’s side and wrenches it open, revealing a glowing red button underneath. ‘Hit this once we’re out, and it’ll take you to a safe zone.’

‘Are we under attack?’ the woman asks. ‘Will my family be OK?’

Cole pulls me out of the elevator, a muscle twitching in his jaw. ‘Just stay calm. I’m sure everything will be fine.’ He punches a button on the wall, and the elevator doors close, taking the woman and her son away.

I run through the Wash-and-Blast corridor to the parking lot and spin round, covering my mouth in disbelief.

Our airlock wasn’t the only one. Twelve massive Wash-and-Blasts are open, all leading to elevator shafts that go down to the residential floors. The fail-safes have been overridden. The whole compound is compromised. Below me, eighty thousand people are still trying to seal their doors.

But they won’t be able to. The kick simulation has broken every layer of Homestake’s security, just to get us out of here.

‘Wait here,’ Cole says. ‘I’ll get the jeep. Leoben and Crick have already left with the clonebox. Are you ready?’

‘No,’ I spit, whirling on him. ‘All the airlocks are open, aren’t they? That was Jun Bei’s escape plan, wasn’t it? She opened everything to get out faster. Cole, there’s dozens of second-stagers on the perimeter, and nobody here is immune.’

‘Why are you angry at me?’ he snaps. ‘You’re the one who wanted to come here, remember? I wanted to stay away. You’re the one who agreed to this plan.’

My cheeks burn. He’s right. I’m the one who made the decision. I chose to come here and steal a clonebox instead of finding one on the surface. The thought just makes me more determined to stop this. To make it right and keep these people safe.

I drop my backpack, dragging out my genkit. ‘I’m shutting this down.’

Cole shakes his head. ‘Cat, these people are safe. Homestake has a mile-wide buffer zone.’

‘And that’s not enough, not any more. The virus is evolving, and the clouds are getting bigger. If those people on the perimeter blow while these airlocks are open, the cloud could make it inside, and then there’ll be no stopping it. I need to kill the simulation.’

I set my genkit on the concrete floor, flicking up its wireless antenna. One of the viruses I’ve written to hack Cartaxus for the Skies should be able to force an emergency closure. The screen flashes as it boots up, connecting to Homestake’s network, logging in automatically. The genkit still has Dax’s login details from when he scanned my panel. That’s going to make this a lot easier.

‘Cat, we don’t have time for this. We need to get out of here.’

‘Then go and get the jeep.’ I keep my eyes glued to the screen, navigating into Homestake’s security systems.

He lets out a growl of frustration. ‘OK, you have two minutes and then I’m dragging you out of here before the guards arrive.’

‘That’s fine,’ I say. ‘I don’t need long.’

He drops his backpack and runs through the parking lot towards a row of gleaming vehicles. My fingers are a blur on the keyboard as I search through Homestake’s systems. Dax’s login is like magic; he has top-level clearance. His password ushers me into every server, every database. My genkit’s fan hums as I navigate into the airlock system and load up the list of emergency protocols. The screen flashes, showing me a dozen different fail-safes I can trigger to close the airlocks. I pick the simplest one and start running it. If my intuition is correct, then the airlocks would be designed so that opening them is difficult, but closing them should be almost trivial.

Almost.

A few commands in, I find myself fighting against what must be part of Jun Bei’s kick simulation. It’s a virus, that’s for sure. It’s the most sophisticated piece of malware I’ve ever seen. Dax must have dumped it somewhere clever, because it somehow got instant access to everything. Not just the elevators and the airlocks – it’s in the ventilation systems, the lighting, the communications grid, even though it looks like the servers for those systems are separated by firewalls. It’s shorting out circuits and wreaking chaos and confusion in every system I can see, and I have no idea how it got to them so fast. My hacks sometimes took hours, and I’d do preparations for days.

This code has taken over Homestake in minutes.

I throw a handful of commands at the airlock sensors, but the simulation smacks me down before I finish typing. My genkit’s screen flashes, the text blurring before my eyes as the simulation morphs, spinning round to attack my connection.

It knows I’m here. This thing is smart, and now it’s coming for me. I yank out the genkit’s antenna, but I’m a heartbeat too late.

The screen dies.

‘No!’ I shout, jabbing the power key. The genkit boots up again, but it won’t be safe to use the wireless connection any more. From outside, I hear the distant sound of gunfire, followed by a resounding crack. It might have been a grenade, or it might have been one of the infected people on the perimeter detonating. Either way, I’m running out of time. I turn round to look for Cole, and the glow of headlights splashes over me.

He found the jeep. He’s coming back.

‘OK, think,’ I mutter, closing my eyes, trying to remember the list I pulled up of the ways to trigger an airlock closure. There were a handful of options that bypassed the networks, that Jun Bei’s code can’t possibly stop. A switch near the guard station. A lever in the lookout tower. Explosions in the Wash-and-Blasts …

An explosion. That’ll do it. If I can crack one of the glass panels in a Wash-and-Blast, it’ll trigger the lockdown the guard warned me about. I don’t know if it’ll jerk the whole system back to life, but it’s worth a try. I don’t have time for anything else.

The jeep races across the parking lot, screeching to a stop behind me. Cole’s door flies open. ‘Time’s up, we have to go. They’re coming for us.’

‘I need a bomb,’ I say, turning to him, still crouched beside my genkit. ‘Or a grenade, anything. I need to trigger one of these airlocks.’

‘Are you kidding? Get in the jeep, Cat.’

‘I’m not leaving until these are closed. I’m serious. I need a bomb to blow up one of the airlocks.’

Cole jumps out of the jeep and grabs his backpack. ‘I’m not blowing anything up, Catarina. We need to get out now. There’ll be soldiers swarming through here any second.’

‘Please, Cole!’

He tosses his backpack into the jeep and comes back for mine. ‘It’s over, Cat. You tried. Now we need to run.’

He picks up my backpack, striding round the jeep to throw it in the back, and I look down at my trusty, beat-up genkit. The keyboard is full of crumbs, still crusted with my dried blood, and the duct tape holding the screen together is starting to peel off. It’s a wreck, but it’s my wreck. Without it, I can’t hack or code. It’s my sidekick, my lifeline.

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