Needless to say, not everyone made that trade. That’s when the Skies began.
Novak waves at me from the genkit’s cracked screen. Most people make calls in VR, so I had to resurrect some old-school video code so I could talk to her. Her face pixelates for a moment into green and purple static, garbled by the weak satellite connection. The genkit gets a better signal in the cabin than my comm-link does, but the lag is still ridiculous.
She smiles. ‘Good evening, Catarina.’
I flinch. The Skies network is encrypted, but I still don’t like using my real name. As far as Cartaxus knows, I died in the outbreak, and I’d like to keep it that way.
‘Sorry, Bobcat,’ she says. ‘I got the asthma code you forwarded. A little boy in Montana is breathing on his own again, thanks to you. I’ve got a segment ready to broadcast. I’d love to put you on air.’
‘No,’ I say, waving my hands. ‘Absolutely not.’
Novak pauses as my words bounce between satellites, reaching her a long, lagged moment after I speak. She sighs. We have this argument every time I steal a piece of code from Cartaxus’s servers and release it to the Skies. That’s another way Cartaxus is trying to help us – by withholding medical code and giving it only to the people in their bunkers. If you get hurt or sick, you can’t just download an app like you used to. You have to hand yourself in to a bunker, or suffer on your own.
Or you can try Novak and her people. They maintain the last independent network, run on the old Russian satellites. They have libraries of code – open source, as free as the skies – but it’s glitchy and mostly written by amateurs. I write occasional apps and patches, but my biggest contributions come from the assaults I launch against Cartaxus’s servers. Basic smash-and-grab jobs. Busting into their databases, stealing any scraps of code I can find. Sometimes it’s antibiotics, sometimes it’s comm patches, and sometimes it’s a piece of code written by Dax or my father.
Every time I find one of their files, it’s like a beam of light. Suddenly the years have been rolled back, and they’re downstairs in the lab again. There’s no virus, no Cartaxus soldiers. For a single, weightless moment there is only Dax’s stupid variable names and my father’s love of Fibonacci search. The lonely years spent learning, coding and hacking are worth it just for that. Just to find scraps of their work and know they’re still alive.
‘I’m going to get you on air one of these days,’ Novak says, arching a scarlet eyebrow. ‘But that’s not why I called. Something big’s going down at Cartaxus. We heard your name in the scuttlebutt.’
‘My name?’
‘Yes, your real name. Couldn’t make out many details, but your father was mentioned too. I don’t know what’s going on, but I don’t like it. You might want to lie low for a while.’
My chest tightens. ‘When was this?’
‘An hour ago. I just got the report now and called as soon as I could.’
I glance at the window. That was around the time Agnes warned me about a jeep near the property. It can’t be a coincidence.
‘Everything OK there?’ Novak asks. ‘Catarina, can you hear me?’
Her voice rises, but I stay silent, the back of my neck prickling. My hand slides to the genkit’s mute key. Through the living-room window I can see the last spots of light on the lake and a herd of scattering deer.
They’re running from the water, wide-eyed and skittish, as the pigeons above them cry and swirl, twitching to crimson. Something’s spooked them. Something close. There’s nothing on my scans, but I feel it in my stomach.
Someone’s here.
‘Gotta go,’ I whisper, closing the genkit on Novak’s worried face. If I run, I might get into the woods before they reach the cabin. I stand, grabbing my rucksack, then bolt through the front door, across the porch and down the stairs.
My bike is on its side in the grass. I grab it and drag it with me, racing away from the cabin and into the cover of the trees. Still nothing on my scans. I run along the path, dodging branches, following a dirt trail through the forest.
My ocular tech scrambles to adjust to the dim light, filtering the signals from my retina and pulsing them into my optic nerve. If I had better tech, I’d be able to see clearly in pitch blackness, but all my rudimentary panel can show me is a slightly brighter, pixelated view of the trees. It’s just enough to let me run, my knuckles white on the handlebars of my bike, weaving through the trees, skirting the edge of the lake. I reach a thicket on the far side and pause, throwing a glance over my shoulder. For a second all I see is darkness, and then the cabin’s lines resolve, and I throw myself behind the closest tree.
They’re here. A black jeep, just like Agnes said, is crunching down the driveway. My tech chirps, finally picking up the engine’s whine. The windows are obsidian black, the sides clearly armoured. It looks like the love-child of a Ferrari and a tank.
The engine cuts out as the jeep pulls up beside the cabin, and the driver’s door swings open, throwing a slice of light across the porch. A single man steps out. His face is a blur of pixels until my tech locks in on him, drawing his features into focus.
He’s young. Eighteen, maybe. Tall, with jacked-up muscles, dressed in a black tank top with the Cartaxus antlers stamped in white on his chest. His hair is dark and close-cropped, framing a stubble-dusted jaw and a nose that looks like it’s been broken a dozen times. Black leylines stretch up from his panel and frame the edges of his face, branching into the outer corners of his eyes and under his jaw. They’re matt and sleek, tattoo-like, a conduit for code that’s too unpredictable to run beneath the skin.
He steps towards the cabin, holding a semi-automatic, and turns his head slowly to scan the trees. My curiosity spikes. One soldier. That’s all they sent. He’s not a normal soldier, though; I’ve never seen one like this before. The troops from Homestake all look the same – armoured jackets and fatigues, with HEPA-filtered masks and weapons wired right into their arms. They’re always fidgeting, jumpy with stimulants, snapping their heads round to let their visor’s AI scan their surroundings for them.
But not this man.
His clothing isn’t even bulletproof, and he stands eerily still as he scans the trees, his face expressionless. He has no backup, no drones, no shouted instructions. He’s just a kid, barely older than me, with a gun and a fancy car.
What the hell is Cartaxus up to?
I lean forward, squinting, when a crack echoes through the forest like a gunshot. The soldier spins round, searching for the origin of the sound. I flinch instinctively, drawing back behind the tree. My vision zooms in and out, and my hand comes down on a dry branch as I try to steady myself.
It snaps beneath my fingers.
Such a little sound that might as well be a firecracker for the way it slices through the air, echoing off the mountains. I shoot a glance back at the soldier and find him staring right at me. His hands tighten on his weapon.