Crossover: (Cassandra Kresnov Book 1)

Darkness. The chemicals stung, and she fought them. Established an active barrier. Failed to get immediately further, which was frightening. She should have been waking up. Unless there was a deliberate blockage, which was more frightening. She focused hard and felt that awareness trigger a response. It grew stronger. Through the tangled pathways of colour and light she found her bearings, and felt the pathways opening up on all sides.

Sounds, faint and distant, now growing stronger. Beeping. It sounded like an audio mechanism for a monitor. Human voices. Indistinct. The whining of something mechanical. Electrical.

‘… can’t you …’

‘… much I … insufficient penetration …’

And other things.

Light, multi-spectrummed and unidirectional. She always saw that first, before the rest. Then brighter, and clearer, and she discovered her eyelids, and blinked. Lips parted, and for the briefest instant she felt them tingling.

She was staring at the floor, she realised. Lying prone on something, face down. She couldn’t feel the rest of her body. Yet. Again the whining noise. Then a thick humming. She could smell more chemicals then, rich and cloying. Antiseptic. And suffered a jolt of terror, knowing that smell intimately under different circumstances.

‘Nearly full consciousness. Damn, that’s fast.’

‘… not going to be able to shut it down for a while yet … the intricacies of those barrier matrixes mean a long, hard time before the infiltrators get close enough.’

Sandy tried to speak, but her voice wouldn’t work. Just a slight, ineffectual movement of her lips. She was nearly completely paralysed and numb, and was aware of something nibbling, working deeper, somewhere deep inside. She focused inward, searching for her linkups. The connections were sluggish, but they worked. And they told her that something was eating away at her barrier elements.

She searched further. It had a power source, an external link, which meant it was plugged in somewhere. That was bad news. As for what it was … and she recoiled as it shocked her, blanking her newly acquired vision back to darkness.

‘It’s probing. Ran into the barrier elements just then. Probably try again in a moment.’

‘Right, keep working. Don’t get impatient…’

It had left an impression when it shocked her, that invader. Sandy pondered over it for a moment. And when she figured she knew what it was, she began to drop a section of her elements, slowly, fading in and out.

‘… here, you see that? That’s progress…’

‘Try it slowly, see what happens …’

The invader moved in, sucking in the codes, breaking them down, bit by bit, eating away … and greedily bit deeper than it ought. Sandy raised her elements hard as she could, feeling a surge of fury as she trapped the thing momentarily, and hit it with as high an attack burst as she could muster, right where she thought it most vulnerable. For a moment, it was a complete energy whiteout.

‘Shit!’ There was a popping noise, and she could suddenly smell something burning, like cabling. ‘What the fuck was that …’ and a confusion of activity.

Her vision was clearing. Small muscles in her face, neck and throat, and down her spine, chemicals cleared out in that energy burst, down the main neural pathways. Down her back and into her legs, a tingling rush of sensation.

‘Damn, that’s wiped the chemical blockages. She’s regaining contact.’

‘Increase the dosage … get that damn unit replaced, it’s completely fried, you’ll never restart it…’

‘That’s the most powerful neural attack pattern I’ve ever seen from a Skin …’

‘Dammit, I told you not to underestimate it.’

More commotion, and the movement of equipment. The smoke smell lingered. Someone pulled the cable connection from the back of her skull, only to replace it with another … she tried to send another charge up it, but the barriers were too strong, and in her present state she was unable to find the necessary frequency modulations.

She could feel her arms now. Numb, now that the chemical dosage was being reapplied, but she could feel them all the same. She could feel her whole body, except for her left leg below the knee. Numb, but feeling. And she had those connections firmly secured now, she knew her systems well, and knew that once re-established, no chemicals would entirely displace them. She had adapted.

Another burst of concentration and she had her voice back.

‘Where am I?’ The sound was little more than a croak, but the words were clear enough. There was a silence, except for equipment shifting.

‘Hello Cassandra,’ said a male voice, after that slight pause. Bemused sarcasm. Coming from somewhere above and behind her. ‘That is what you call yourself, isn’t it? Cassandra?’

The buzzing sound resumed from behind, and something in her right knee tingled faintly, sensation running up and down her leg. It grew stronger, and not at all pleasant.

‘What are you doing to me?’

‘Joe, can you shut it up?’ No audible response.

‘Tell me!’ She could hear the fear in her own voice, bad as it was. The right leg sensation got even worse. Reflexes tried to move, but nothing happened. It was the drug, and the restraints. And that damnable cord in the back of her head, probing away. She hadn’t the strength to hit it again. And it wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.

‘We could gag her.’ Sandy realised that she was hardly even breathing, the oxygen was coming from elsewhere. And something in her knee gave way with a hard pop that she felt jamming through her teeth.

‘It’s not a her,’ that same male voice replied. ‘No one calls it her. Got that?’ More deep concentration, and Sandy gathered another breath.

‘What are you doing to my leg?’ An unsteady rasp. Pain, then, of a deep, horrible kind, far from the superficial torment of skin and flesh wounds. Conversational murmurs, working conversation and something crunched agonisingly through her knee, the buffers overriding then, making it numb. Which told her it must have been very, very bad.

Movement, then, to one side of her head, people walking. She rolled her eyes to that side as far as she could, unable to move her head. But in her excellent peripheral vision, she saw one of the lab-coated workers was holding something in his hands, placing it carefully onto a synthetic trolley surface … the bottom half of her right leg, amputated at the knee.

That, obviously, was why she couldn’t feel her left foot either.

Sandy screwed her eyes shut. Tears leaked through the lids, spilling onto her eyelashes. She tried to draw a deep breath but found it difficult. This couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t.

‘Stop it,’ she croaked. No one listened. There was more conversation about other things, and the sounds of more equipment. ‘You can’t do this. Please. Please stop.’

‘I’m getting very sick of listening to that.’ Distracted, and bad-tempered. ‘Shock it.’

‘We’ll move faster on the barrier elements if she’s conscious…’

‘I don’t care, shock it.’

There was a white flash of energy, and more pain, and then darkness.

Awoke with a jolt. And found herself in a living nightmare. Vision blurred in and out, and the antiseptic odour stank foully. A crushing pressure weighed upon her consciousness. She felt herself squashed into a small, cramped corner, forced by something incredibly heavy. She felt desperately for her elements, finding shards of broken code and jumbled, static-like mess. Her balance was shaky, and things floated.

Sounds came to her as if from a great distance. Voices, once loud, then soft again. She fought the pressure, panicking, and made herself a little space amid the nausea, grabbing at the old, steady connections, squeezing desperately at the dogged pathways … and nearly wished she hadn’t. Hard pressure midway up her back, jabbing deep. A popping, hammering vibration, rattling her skull. A sickening wrench from her right shoulder, one way, then the other. The harsh whine of a power tool in her ear. A limp weight being shifted. Her arm. An impossible, grinding agony through her middle, buffers not coming to her rescue … A frightened, agonised gasp from her lips, air spilling into empty lungs. Murmurs of consternation from nearby, echoing through the fractured sanity in her mind.

‘STOP!!!‘ she screamed, pure terror wrenching back control of lungs and vocals. ‘OH FUCK, I cant feel my legs, fucking STOP IT!!!‘ Drew another great, sobbing breath, something popping hard up her spine in an explosion of static pain. ‘Oh GOD!!! I’m SCARED, don’t DO this to me!!!‘ That shrill whining in her ear, hard, crackling pressure through her shoulder joint… she couldn’t feel her left arm either, it was gone, like her legs, like her entire pelvis …oh Jesus, cut in half, they’d cut her in half and were working up her spine…

‘PLEASE!!!‘ she sobbed hysterically, shuddering breaths fighting past the growing, rasping tightness of her throat and chest … ‘Oh God, I’m pegging you … NO!!!‘ as with one final crack! something in her shoulder gave way, then that awful, zero-sensation of something just missing, simply not there anymore. To her right, something limp and heavy was lifted away. Her arm.

She would have screamed. But a scream was insufficient. And then she lost her voice completely, and the pressure crushed her flat and sprawling.

‘Got through,’ she heard a voice, faintly. ‘That’s the final one, it’s all downhill from here …’ And nothing more.

The pressure bore down, hard, cold and invasive. She fought. The effort was enormous — the pressure consumed, it drank down light, and thought, and everything that was hers and hers alone. It took her space and her thoughts, and her hope. It was despair. It could not be fought.

But she could run. Sandy drew back, retreating down familiar pathways, cross-connections, withdrawing further and further into the deep, dark recesses that only she knew, hiding, making herself small. The darkness followed. It pulled, and it gnawed, and it bit. It threatened to suck her down, into oblivion. Instant by instant, it consumed those last deep pathways, snatching her hiding places, pushing her backwards, further and further, deeper and deeper. There was no hope. But she fought anyway, pointlessly clutching to the last, barest strands of what was hers. It was what she was. And it was all that she’d ever been.

The thing on the operating table was a curiosity. It was a torso, although only barely recognisable as such. A human torso. Separated skin hung in great, thick folds over the table rim, draped like rubbery cloth. Musculature glistened in the theatre glare, thickly structured and coloured a reddish-grey. White bone showed in places, the curvature of ribs. Sensory implements protruded from the spinal column like a back-ridge of slim bristles. Below the lowest rib there was nothing, only the glistening cavity where the intestinal tract had been. The spinal column ended abruptly at a single, nubbed vertebra of the middle spine. Rounded bone at the shoulder joint, smooth and glistening. Musculature trailed loosely where it had been separated.

Above perched the black, angular arm of a scanner, waiting and watching, vulture-like. Cabling trailed down from attachments, connections inserted into that mass of wet, red-grey tissue. Systems analysed, took data, stored it. Some emitted pulses and measured the response. People in white coats looked at their monitors and pushed their buttons, absorbed in their tasks.

Beneath a ragged mop of dark blonde hair, the woman who knew herself as Cassandra Kresnov stared sightlessly at the spotless floor, her head held in place with a metal brace, fixed tightly across the forehead. Once expressive blue eyes were blank and unmoving. Eyelids still. Her lips were pale, held slightly apart, as if frozen at the beginnings of a word, or a sentence. From a corner of her mouth hung a thin strand of saliva.

‘… absolutely incredible sophistication,’ one of the whitecoats was saying to the man with the shoulder-length dark hair. His voice was a hushed murmur in the morgue-like silence broken only by the beeping machines. Screen light reflected off the viewing windows, rapid scrawls of numerical data chasing infinity. ‘It’d take our biomechanics industries another hundred years to match this level of sophistication.’

‘I know.’ The dark-haired man stroked his chin, gazing intently at his monitor. ‘It makes you wonder.’

‘Sure does. Hell, I’ve seen Skins before, but this is something else. The neural integration is just…’ He let out a small whistle and shook his head. ‘Absolutely mind-blowing. Seamless growth interface. There’s no telling where the neurology leaves off and the technology begins. She processes datalink information like you or I process a punch in the arm — it’s all reflex. More than that, if you or I had to process all the sensory input she receives we’d go mad. But she seems very stable.’

‘Don’t call it she,’ the dark-haired man said, still watching his monitor. Screen light scrolled across lean, handsome features. The eyes were watching. Cold.

‘Force of habit.’ Ran a hand through short clipped hair. ‘How long do we have?’

‘Long enough.’ The other man nodded. Cords and cables roamed across the floor. A central screen projected accumulation graphics. Levels rose. The database grew. ‘Just keep working. No protests when they get here — we’ll look after you.’

Another nod, though less assured. ‘With any luck, we’ll get a couple of hours.’ The dark-haired man’s lips drew together in a thin line.

‘Not the CSA. I’d give you ninety minutes.’ The second man went back to his work, looking grim. The dark-haired man merely watched his monitor, calculating. If he was worried, it did not show.

What remained of the woman named Cassandra Kresnov merely stared at the floor, hearing nothing. The thin strand of saliva broke, falling unnoticed to the floor. Her eyes registered no response.

Forty-three minutes later, SWAT Lieutenant Vanessa Rice crashed explosively through the main doorway as the doors went flying across the room, propelled by an armoured kick.

‘CSA!’ she yelled over her helmet speakers, advancing fast with weapon levelled. ‘Don’t move!’ One of the startled whitecoats in the decorous office ran for an electronics bank — Vanessa twitched her gun to taser and nailed him with a vicious burst of blue light. The man went down screaming. More shouts and confusion as she ducked through office doors into the surgery proper, more doors and windows splintering as the rest of SWAT Four crashed in, yells of ‘CSA!’ splitting the air, then howls of protest.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing!’ a bearded whitecoat shrieked at her as she stormed into the central office, several of her people barging through adjoining doors. ‘You can’t just come in here and terrorise people …’ He got right into her way, and Vanessa threw him one-handed across the room — propelled by suit armour he crashed and rolled, nearly hitting the wall.

‘I said don’t fucking move!’ she yelled at the continuing commotion of whitecoats about their banks of hastily erected electronics, and around the gear beyond the transparent wall to the side, which appeared to be an operating theatre. They stopped their fiddling reluctantly … one woman kept working and Vanessa shot her too in a convulsive burst of blue light and flailing limbs. ‘Are you morons hard of hearing?’

As her people grabbed those still standing and thrust them ungently against the walls, wickedly dark, fast armour amid helpless, stunned technicians, Vanessa strode into the theatre, weapon levelled at the several techs there … and stopped in horror, seeing what appeared to be a dismembered corpse on the central table, skin peeled back, spine bristling with monitor needles. The theatre floor was a convulsive mass of cables and wires, and tubes to siphon blood.

‘Oh Jesus.’ For several long seconds, she couldn’t move, immobilised with shock.

‘GI,’ said Hiraki, moving in behind her. Circled about the theatre, checking the various monitoring equipment through shaded helmet visor, ignoring the whitecoats who stood aside with forced, nervous calm … not particularly surprised, Vanessa reckoned, in stunned disbelief.

And stared back at the grievous mess on the tabletop … GI, of course it was a GI. That was synth-monitoring gear, even she recognised it, having seen something similar when she’d had her own enhancements done. A GI … oh shit, so that was what this was about, the FIA were after a GI… good Gods, had there been a GI running loose in Tanusha? How the hell had that happened, and why hadn’t the FIA told them like they were supposed to when dragging Federal business into Tanushan territory? And what the hell was all this gear? She directed a stare at the nearest whitecoat, hovering nearby.

‘Is it alive?’ The whitecoat shrugged. ‘What did you do to it?’

‘LT,’ said Hiraki, examining a readout on one of the electronics banks, ‘looks like they’re compiling a database … I think it’s just been transmitted into the net, could be anywhere. This copy just erased itself.’ He hooked a connector from his suit and plugged it with clumsy armoured fingers from helmet to insert socket. From outside the theatre came the sound of more protest at rough treatment.

‘What,’ Vanessa asked the whitecoat icily, ‘are you pricks doing here?’ Another shrug. ‘That’s not good enough. You don’t infiltrate Tanushan security and start a gunfight in public with a GI then just shrug at me when I ask you questions. I’m the law here, fucker. Where did this GI come from, and what are you doing with it?’

The whitecoat just looked at her, lips pressed to a thin, stubborn line.

‘It’s alive,’ Hiraki said, staring at another monitor, ‘I have brainwave function. They’ve got it hooked up with an infiltrator virus of some kind … I’d guess it’s been conscious for some of the time they were cutting.’

Vanessa swore, and strode fast to Hiraki’s console.

‘That’s this plug here … it’s still alive all right, but I don’t know how long they can last without life support …’ She spun around on the whitecoat, who had not moved. ‘Someone come and get these fuckers out of here,’ she snarled, disconnecting her helmet lock in a hiss of escaping air and deactivating visor graphics.

The three whitecoats were pushed toward the door, where Sharma and Devakul, weapons steady, awaited them. Vanessa collared her helmet, shouldered her weapon, grasped the sensor plug in the back of the GI’s head and removed it.

‘Someone get me a chair!’ she shouted, raw vocals to the empty air, and in the space beyond the transparent wall someone scurried to oblige … Vanessa unwound her own connector from her armour webbing, wrinkling her nose as she realised that something smelt very bad here, a pungent, chemical stench that might have been biosystems-based disinfectant…

‘LT,’ said Hiraki, voice muffled behind helmet breather, ‘what are you doing?’

‘I’m going to dive,’ Vanessa told him, as Bjornssen arrived with a chair. She sat, finally getting the thigh pouch open to unfold a small headset, settled it tightly over her head, made the plug-ins and jacked herself in with a heavy, eye-blurring click … so much for seamless interface, she thought sourly, unfolding the longer connector cord as members of her team gathered curiously about her.

‘LT …’ Hiraki’s voice was clearer, having removed his helmet, ‘… that’s a GI there. I don’t think you should dive without…’

‘I can set for automatic disconnect if I’m branched,’ she replied, carefully feeling through the GI’s soft, blonde hair for the socket insert … found it, and inserted. Felt the familiar, humming buzz somewhere deep, loading and interface programs kicking in, establishing connections, powered by her suit’s internal source.

‘Vanessa,’ Kuntoro said warningly from across the operating table, helmet removed, hair flattened and sweaty, ‘you should wait just five minutes, we’ll get an expert team …’

‘It’ll be dead in five minutes,’ Vanessa retorted. The buzzing pulse grew stronger and she could see the construct now, unfolding before her eyes. She pulled the headset visor down … rookie necessity, but Kuntoro was right, it wasn’t strictly her specialty. Bright, glowing textures and shapes, nothing like the raw datalines of external VR … conceptually compatible graphical-construct, CCG. ‘The Feds evidently won’t talk, and if we lose this GI we’ll never know what they wanted with her. This is too big to let go. Now shut up and let me concentrate.’

An expert jacker would not have needed that last. She concentrated anyway, and with the visor down, the netscape unfolded more clearly before her eyes, uncluttered by genuine vision. The earplugs gave her sound, a gentle, thrumming pulse.

The GI was there. A large, intricate field … spherical and glowing, but only dimly. Light pulsed within the interior, golden and deceptive past the deadened outer layers … she moved closer and the spherical field grew enormously in her vision, revealing details. Barrier systems. Interface. Protected, interlocking detail … good Gods, it was massive. She stared in bewilderment, unable to conceive how a single consciousness could maintain a field this large in cyberspace… all these systemically capable structures.

She reached — an awkward, mental reach with dubious control — a light, probing arm through the emptiness of that simulated space … touched. Nothing. The barriers did not respond … and they should have, being that massively powerful. There was no conscious response, no lighting of nearby structures … just deadness. An intricate mass of outer functions, branches and junction nodes … just dead. Like a ball of rolled-up steel fibres, complex but lifeless. How to proceed? She was baffled. And wondering, then, if she wouldn’t have been smarter to listen to her team-mates and awaited the experts … but caution was not her habit, and never had been.

She chose a pathway and entered. A long, complex passageway with a multitude of branches … more than dead, they appeared scraped clean, of a bare and unnatural clarity, like bone parted from flesh. Some connections had been severed, and she could see the gaps where connections ought to be. Internal systems could not communicate. Suddenly, an audio channel clicked open …

‘LT?’ Hiraki’s voice, tinny and artificial. ‘I’ve got a backup lock on you … what do you see?’

‘Unbelievable,’ she replied breathlessly. ‘The field’s so far integrated it seems to go all the way into the main brain. Whatever infiltrator virus was hooked up on that cord, it’s gone in a long way … everything’s dead here in the outer systems. I’m going to go in deeper to see if there’s something alive in there…’

‘Ricey I really don’t think you should. GIs have neural interface so smooth they can even branch a regular human with basic augmentation. This isn’t your average brain-hack we’re talking about here…’

‘If it dies, we’ll never find out what the FIA were up to. This is huge, Hitoru, I can feel it‘

‘Which will do you no good if it kills you.’

‘Thank you for your concern, now get stuffed.’

She probed further, along maze-like systems of baffling complexity, only now coming to understand what it meant to say that GIs integrated to the networks far more efficiently than a mere augmented human. Human biological augmentation required translation between artificial and organic systems. GIs were entirely synthetic, and translation was only a matter of language, not of diametrically opposed systemologies. Every function of a GI’s brain could interface with great independence, thus the complexity of the network field. She herself had to translate everything through a biotech modem, which filtered down the communication efficiency dramatically. But now, she thought as she probed even further into the dead, severed construct, it had proven a vulnerability. The infiltrator virus had hacked its way in, as all data-flows could go both ways. Greater access meant greater reverse vulnerability. And so …

She stopped. Before her, a node was dimly pulsing. She remained a long way from the constructs centre, and the node seemed peripheral. But there it was, a dimly, glowing light, where all about was dead. She thought furiously. She had access to programs that could restore and assist these systems, if she could find a way to interface with the GI’s still functioning systems, if it had any. She called up a selection panel in the bare, still air before her, and sorted through the varied icons …

‘LT,’ came Hiraki on audio, ‘you found something?’

‘Might have. I’m going to try to analyse, see if it’s alive or not … it’s got a lot of life systems to keep functioning … some of these nodes have to be functional. Hold on.’

She selected an icon … cautiously. Thinking it was probably the right one, and wondering once more if Hiraki was right and she was being a fool… Her own implant was nowhere near as extensive as this, but there were enough ways into some of her own basic systems if the GI was powerful and clever enough, and she was leaving herself awfully wide open…

She activated the icon. Nothing. The node just pulsed, a chaotic, spider-like junction point of many twisting arms and connections, many severed, but still pulsing dumbly, with stupid, unthought reflex…

Abruptly her selection panel vanished and the node ceased pulsing in favour of bright, alarming energy. In the walls and passages about her, strands sprang to life, bright paths of gleaming colour streaking across the walls. About her, the simulated air appeared to crackle, a dense, prickling sensation like static electricity on a humid day.

‘LT?’ came Hiraki’s voice. He sounded alarmed. ‘LT, get out of there right now, I read a huge reactivation sequence right in your region …’ and abruptly cut, in a burst of frightening audio static. Vanessa tried her cutoff sequence … it should have pulled her out, retracing her path at high velocity, but nothing happened. She backed up, forcing a flying retreat, but the air itself seemed thick as sludge, and prickling static leapt like bad pins-and-needles across her imagined, virtual skin …

Something probed her audio sequence … she could feel her heart hammering, back in some corner of her brain that continued to monitor such things, real fear at the power of this entity that now glowed in the air about her, and lit all space with brilliant curls and coils of light. Her last audio barrier fell, and it had her frequency with alarming ease …

‘… who are you …?’ A small, quiet voice. Distant but not mechanical, not artificial as Hiraki’s had been. Not simulated. A real, weak, pain-filled voice, as real as a warm, gentle whisper in her ear. ‘… what are you doing here…?’

‘I’m Vanessa.’ Her own voice sounded somehow clearer, on this strange alien channel. Things seemed thick and clear, as if under water. ‘I’m with the CSA. I’m here to help you.’

‘… help … me …’ Which could have been a repetition, or a plea, she wasn’t sure. ‘…no… structure …no support…’ A pause that might have been a sigh. Or a gasp, straining for strength. In the space about, the gleaming construct lines flickered and danced alarmingly. ‘…too… much damage…’

‘I can help you,’ Vanessa said urgently. ‘Let me help you. Stop resisting, let me establish a linkup, you’re too badly damaged to re-establish your own systems, we can feed you the programs externally that will rebuild your pathways …’

‘… trick …’ said the voice. Small, weak … and scared, Vanessa realised with shock. She could feel the emotion clearly, could smell it in the simulated air. The construct reverberated with thick, cloying fear and pain. For a moment it was almost overwhelming.

‘It’s no trick. I’m with the CSA. We’ve arrested the people who’ve done this to you. If you don’t let me in, you’re going to die anyway. Let me help you. I want you to live.’

‘… why …?’ God, an honest question. An innocent, hurting question from someone with no reason at all to believe her … someone, good Lord. She could feel the presence, could feel it probing weakly, trying to feel, trying to live … Someone. This wasn’t a machine. This was a person. It hit her with a force of revelation that almost left her speechless.

‘Because,’ she said after a brief regathering, ‘we want to catch the people who ordered this done to you. And no one deserves this.’

A moment’s indecision. Fear. Reluctant, for reasons Vanessa could only too well understand, now that she’d seen, and heard, and felt. It thought she was going to finish it off. It did not want to be powerless. And it had no reason to believe that anyone would consider it worth saving.

Then, ‘… go …’ And the light about her began to fade, retreating down broken, fragmented pathways, a distant pulsing left in its wake. In haste, Vanessa recovered her selection panel, and activated the correct icons … another gathering, humming sensation, her programs unfolding, a gleaming, latticework link unfurled, shooting up the deadened pathway down which she’d come, establishing hooks and feelers into the walls as it went. Past and over her, reaching for the pulsing node … ripples spread, as if on the surface of a still pond. Interface accepted, established, and did not reject. The node glowed, and the glow spread, gathering to accumulate in many branches around, pausing at severed links, rebuilding as it went. The interface grew, assisted now by the GI’s own systems, which merged smoothly with the growing flood, directing, mapping, showing the way … with greater direction, the flow continued, and the surrounding universe began to gleam with pulsing, spreading energy. It was only a small portion of what needed to be rebuilt. But it was beginning.

Vanessa retreated, wanting to be clear of the constructs depths before it restored to anything like full power, feeling that she might not normally be so welcome here.

But, ‘… thank you …’ a soft voice whispered, weak with emotion and fading among the gleaming, broken strands.

… And she surfaced, eyes flashing open to reveal a glaringly bright operating theatre, and a cluster of worried armoured SWAT personnel gathered around, and someone shining a penlight into her eyes… she batted him aside, unplugged herself and leapt to her feet, mind spinning, breath coming hard as she strode across the room and stared sightlessly into space for a moment.

‘LT?’ came a cautious voice from behind her. Armoured footsteps approached, doubtless concerned that she might not be entirely together. Or sane for that matter. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Jesus Christ,’ she said breathlessly, slowing her racing heartbeat with an effort. Spun about, to find a half dozen anxious faces staring at her, and Singh the one venturing close, the one with medical training. He held up four armoured fingers.

‘LT, how many?’

She ignored him, and strode about the table, staring at the half-torso that lay there, stripped of skin and bristling with monitoring implements … most recognisably not human, at this range — incredulously similar, but she had seen autopsies first-hand and they were nothing this neat and precise … She still held the headset in her hand, a trailing cord along the floor to the GI’s head, connected to her suit’s exposed collar. Continuing to feed the code, and make corrections and adjustments as it went.

‘LT?’

‘She’s alive,’ she said breathlessly, staring at the GI. ‘She’s taking code. I think she’ll be okay but not if she doesn’t get fixed up … Christ, we’ve got to get the paras here. Those look like clean cuts — they should be able to reattach easily enough. They do it to humans all the time if the cut’s clean enough …’

‘She?’ asked Sharma, frowning. Vanessa stared at her, wide-eyed and slightly dazed.

‘Yes, she. Her name’s Sandy.’ How the hell did she know that? The GI hadn’t told her. ‘She’s scared. And confused. She doesn’t know what she did to deserve this.’

Stares from her guys. They thought she’d gone crazy. It happened sometimes to people who dived too deep, or stayed too long, or poked their reckless noses where they weren’t welcome. Something bleeped on her inner-ear frequency. That was backup arriving, landing on the roofpads. She made a connection.

‘Naidu,’ a voice acknowledged in her inner ear, ‘go Vanessa.’

‘We have to get the best biotech surgeons and specialists available. There’s a GI here and she’s in bad shape.’

‘A GI?’ Pause. ‘Shit, that explains a few things. I’ll get everyone. I don’t think they’ll have to be asked twice.’

Vanessa strode back around the table, ignoring her gathered team and careful not to entangle the cord. Knelt down by the GI’s immobilised, blond-haired head, an uncomfortable move in the bulky armour, and gazed at her face. The eyes stared unsighted at the floor, loose hair framing features that might have been beautiful under other circumstances.

You’ll be okay, Vanessa thought, remembering the sensation of hurt and fear, and despair. Remembering the voice, distinctly female now that she remembered it, whispering in her ear. We’ll fix you. Whatever you are, and whatever you’ve done, no one deserves this. Not even a GI.