‘That’s the thing,’ Novak says, sighing. ‘We don’t know how to do this. We were hoping your father had figured it out.’
‘But you both have satellite networks,’ I say.
‘Yes,’ the glass-skinned woman says, ‘and we control the panels of everyone in our bunkers for this very reason. We can simply give them the vaccine without asking their permission. But we can’t do that with the people on the surface.’
I nod slowly, bringing my hand absently to the black lozenge hanging around my neck. An algorithm is forming in my mind, the spark of something wild and terrible. Something that might just explain why my father left Dax a copy of Jun Bei’s kick simulation.
‘We’ll do a broadcast,’ Novak says.
The man groans. ‘That’s your answer to everything.’
Novak tosses her head. ‘This will be different, though. We’ll put Catarina and Crick in it. We’ll come up with a story about us breaking him out of Cartaxus …’
‘Oh, I like it,’ the woman says.
The three of them start planning out some kind of giant broadcast, but I barely hear them. Jun Bei’s simulation is spinning through my mind. My father didn’t leave it to break us out of a bunker; it was another backup plan – something he knew that I would see and understand. Jun Bei’s simulation hacked into every panel in Homestake, using the same trapdoor mechanism the nightstick around my neck relies on. It’s the one crack in the security of every single panel.
I think I can use it too.
I look up sharply, meeting Novak’s gaze as the final jigsaw piece of my father’s plan slides neatly into place.
‘I can do this,’ I say, interrupting their conversation. ‘I can get the vaccine into every panel, but you’re going to have to do exactly as I say.’
CHAPTER 32
‘It’s beautiful,’ Novak says, leaning over my shoulder as she reads the code I’ve written.
‘It’s evil,’ I reply.
She just smiles, turning her steely gaze to me. ‘We live in evil times, Catarina. Sometimes we need to embrace that to survive.’
I sit back, crossing my arms, staring at the terminal’s screen. It took me less than an hour to write the code that will download the vaccine into every panel. Novak found me a server terminal with a screen and keyboard, and I sat and built a weapon out of Jun Bei’s trapdoor code. I wove elements from my own viruses with lines from the sparse precision of Cartaxus’s nightstick, blending them into something terrible.
An abomination.
While I was working, Cartaxus and Novak were scrambling to set up a joint satellite network – a formal alliance to share gentech code and information. That was one of my demands, and they met it. They’re preparing their people for a unified world.
‘So what happens now?’ I ask. ‘Are you ready to run the decryption?’
‘Not quite yet.’ Novak steps away. ‘I always said I was going to put you on one of my broadcasts. I’d like you to stand beside me while we announce the vaccine to the world.’
My stomach clenches. I’ve forced myself to write this code, and I’m ready to give up my life for the vaccine, but I don’t know if I can pretend to be happy about it. ‘I-I don’t know what I’d say.’
‘I’ll handle that.’ Novak’s eyes roam over my face. She lifts a strand of my tangled hair, frowning. ‘But first, we have to get you cleaned up.’
Three hours later, I’m led into an igloo-like dome with cameras covering its walls and ceiling like a thousand black, unblinking eyes. Novak’s daily broadcasts are recorded in VR for people to watch through their panels, so it looks like she’s standing in their homes, speaking directly to them. Most virtual reality segments are filmed by just two or three cameras, whose footage is fed through animation engines that build a 3-D image, but the result is never perfect. Sometimes it messes up. The only way to get a perfect image is to film each actor in a VR dome, but they’re expensive, and rare. The Skies, as it turns out, has a few of them.
A dozen lights have been carefully positioned between the cameras to light up my hair and face. A makeup artist frantically dusts a final layer of powder across my cheeks before ducking out through a rubber hole in the side of the dome.
I stand awkwardly, shoving my hands in my pockets. Novak’s team dressed me in slim-fitting black jeans, a white tank top, and knee-high boots. Three makeup artists worked on my face for an hour before throwing up their hands and declaring that they’d done their best with what they were given. My scarred skin has been smoothed out with a temporary nanofiller, and my hair has been washed, treated and blow-dried into rippling waves. My long-neglected eyebrows are sharp, and my eyes are lined with black, my eyelashes miraculously multiplied. Catching my reflection in the lenses is like looking at an alien creature. I still look like me, but it’s a version of myself that I never imagined was possible. I look smart, refined. It’s the perfect mask to hide the nerves jumping inside me.
‘On in five,’ a familiar voice says, crackling from the speakers embedded in the dome’s ceiling. A red light above me grows brighter, and a handful of tiny, palm-size screens tucked between the cameras flicker on. One to my left shows Dax tilting his head back and forth, looking at himself in his cameras. The screen to my right shows a stylist fixing Novak’s hair.
We’re going to stand together – a Cartaxus scientist, the leader of the Skies and Lachlan Agatta’s daughter – and recite a speech Novak’s team has written. It talks about how important it is for everyone to download the vaccine, and how safe it is, how thoroughly the code has been tested. I’ll tell the world how Dax and I communicated secretly for years, like star-crossed lovers. That the two of us convinced the Skies and Cartaxus to finally work together.
It’s all lies.
The speech makes no mention of the fact that Dax only joined Cartaxus because they took him away at gunpoint. It doesn’t explain that none of us except Dax has even seen the vaccine, let alone tested it.
That the only person who understood the code is gone.
But that doesn’t matter. The broadcast is merely serving as a distraction from the true nature of what the satellites are sending. While we’re talking, my trapdoor code will be beamed into the feeds of every satellite in orbit and then crawl silently into the arm of every person on the planet. No one will have a choice. People won’t even know it’s happened. It’s hidden by the same firewall that concealed Cole’s black-out code from him. Later, when the unlocked vaccine is broadcast, this trapdoor code will automatically download it. The vaccine will run in secret until some hacker eventually discovers it, but by then the virus will be dead.
Everyone will be safe, and humanity will survive, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that this is a violation on a fundamental level.
‘Stand on the mark, Agatta,’ the voice in the speakers says.