But if I can get it to self-destruct, it’s also a tiny bomb.
Before I can give myself time to hesitate, I yank out the genkit’s needle-tipped wire and jab it into the side of my knee. It flies out of my grip, burying itself in my skin, squirming into the socket buried under my kneecap. My leg twitches as the needle tip locks into place with a click. The genkit’s screen flashes.
EMERGENCY CODE ONLY.
There’s no panel in my arm, which means there’s nothing to check the code I’m about to send into my system. A panel isn’t just a computer; it’s a gatekeeper, stopping toxic code and nanites from being dumped into my body. Without a panel, I have no safety checks. I could send myself nanites that’ll chew the flesh right off my bones, that could swarm through my body and devour my cells.
And that’s exactly what I’m doing.
A few keystrokes are all it takes to prime the lasers, to make sure that when the genkit detonates, it’ll go off like a rocket. I tap out a dozen commands, sourcing malicious code from my stored files, wrapping them up into a virus I can send into my knee. A butchered, weaponized piece of code that will attack my cells in the same way my father bubbled the skin off my back. I don’t know how far it will spread from my knee, but I know it’s going to hurt. It’ll open up a gaping wound in my leg, but that doesn’t matter.
Tonight, after we get to the lab and unlock the vaccine, I’ll be dead. A busted knee will be the least of my concerns.
The needle-tipped wire vibrates as the commands chug through the genkit, dumping a stream of nanites into my knee. It only takes a second until the genkit’s internal safety checks realize what I’m doing, and the emergency system kicks in.
ILLEGAL OPERATION DETECTED.
SELF-DESTRUCT SEQUENCE INITIATED.
HALT OPERATION TO PREVENT SELF-DESTRUCT.
That’s the thing about genkits – they’re not weapons, and they’re not designed to be. If the machine thinks you’re trying to kill someone with it, it’ll blow itself up. Years of lawsuits, judges, protests and hastily written laws led to the manufacturers burying tiny bombs inside every processor. Rather than run illegal code, it’ll explode with a puff of smoke.
Hopefully the blast will be big enough to close the Wash-and-Blast.
The genkit’s screen flashes. White-hot pain flares in my knee. The reader wire tries to eject from the socket, but I hold it in, gritting my teeth. The pain grows, spreading to my calf. Just a few more seconds …
THIS MACHINE WILL SELF-DESTRUCT IN 10, 9 …
‘Finally,’ I gasp, yanking the wire out, crawling on my good knee, shoving my genkit into the gaping Wash-and-Blast.
‘What are you doing?’ Cole shouts. ‘Get in the jeep. We need to get out of here!’
‘I will,’ I murmur. ‘I just … I don’t think I can walk.’
‘What have you done?’ Cole stares at the genkit, his eyes flashing to black.
SELF-DESTRUCT IN 5, 4 …
Cole’s arm slides round my waist, yanking me from the floor, and the parking lot spins as he throws me into the passenger seat. The genkit’s screen flashes red. Cole races round the hood to the driver’s side, and then everything seems to happen at once.
My genkit detonates in a flash of light, belching clouds of smoke, and a deafening roar cuts through the air. The concrete floor beneath us shakes. Cole hurls himself into the driver’s seat, slamming the door shut behind him. I grab the side of my seat, twisting round to stare back as the jeep surges forward, bouncing up the ramp and outside. That was a hell of an explosion for a laptop genkit, but it worked. The steel, circular doors of the Wash-and-Blasts are slamming shut.
‘I did it,’ I breathe, still staring back as we burst into the wasteland, my entire leg throbbing with pain. ‘It closed the airlocks, Cole.’
He doesn’t reply. He’s probably still angry, even though he gave me no choice. I’ve just destroyed my knee because he wouldn’t use a damn grenade. I turn back, starting to yank up my trouser leg to see the damage, and freeze.
The roar I heard wasn’t from the genkit. It wasn’t my little explosion that made the bunker’s floor shake. That was something else, something bigger. It’s rising as a cloud on Homestake’s perimeter, but it can’t possibly be what I think it is.
It’s too tall, too powerful. It looks like a tornado. A solid plume, fifty feet across, spreading once it hits the clouds. I scrunch my eyes shut and open them again, hoping it’s a trick of perspective, but it’s not. It’s more than twice the size of any plume I’ve seen before. It rises like a rocket, the colour of misted blood.
There’s no denying it. It’s a Hydra cloud.
CHAPTER 27
Cole’s eyes are glassy and black, his forehead beaded with sweat as he wrenches the steering wheel, swinging the jeep round. It sways as we hurtle away from the lookout tower, bouncing through the rubble and dust of Homestake’s buffer zone. The cloud billows behind us, a wall of red mist racing in from the perimeter. Far above us, three peaks of gas rise like crimson mountains. My breath catches as the weight of what I’m seeing hits me.
Three blowers just detonated at exactly the same time, forming a single cloud, bigger than any I’ve seen before. They always go in groups – sometimes minutes apart, sometimes hours – but I’ve never seen them blow like this, creating a single, towering cloud. This plume will spread for miles. Homestake’s buffer won’t be enough. The cloud is too tall, too strong.
Without its airlocks, Homestake would be doomed.
I twist in my seat to stare out the window as we skid through the wasteland, speeding towards the concrete perimeter wall. The mist is a living thing, heaving through the air, billowing out across the ash-strewn ground. It swallows the bunker whole, engulfing the lookout tower, an unstoppable wave of hot, rolling scarlet.
‘What the hell is that thing?’ Cole shouts.
‘It’s a Hydra cloud.’
‘It can’t be.’ Cole jerks his head to look. ‘It’s too big.’
‘It’s three blowers,’ I say, turning back to the front, gritting my teeth as pain shoots through my leg. ‘Three times as strong.’
‘The airlocks …’
‘I closed them.’
‘How?’ Cole wrenches the wheel, swerving through the rubble. A pair of gun-bots lie on their backs, their laser scanners splashing the ground. Their arched steel legs flail like overturned insects. Jun Bei’s simulation must have destroyed every layer of Homestake’s security.
It’s the most impressive code I’ve ever seen.
Jealousy flares through me. I haven’t encountered many other viruses that were better than my own code, and Jun Bei’s made mine look like a joke. Cole said she and my father used to code together at Cartaxus.
Maybe that was why he was so distant at the cabin. Because I didn’t measure up to her.
I bite back the thought, reaching for my backpack, hauling it into my lap. The pain in my knee is spreading down my calf.
‘How?’ Cole repeats. ‘How did you close the airlocks?’