“She didn’t even try to dodge . . .” Angel’s surprised outburst trailed off as Chen’s body began to twitch, and her right hand, still holding the pistol, lifted off the ground. Juliet sprang forward and managed to get one whole step in before Angel reacted and fired her speed boost. She didn’t know exactly what was happening with Chen’s body or how it could be moving with a significant percentage of her gray matter turned to slush, but she figured it had something to do with the Angel chip. In her mind, the quickest solution was to remove that chip from the body.
Her right hand joined her left on the monoblade’s hilt, and as soon as she was close enough, she hacked downward, slicing through Chen’s neck and into the plasteel floor. The body jerked once and then lay still. Juliet looked up at the five or six huddled figures at the back of the lab and shouted, “Stay still, and I won’t hurt you.” Part of her wanted to explain herself, to rail at them about what a monster Chen was. Another part didn’t care, or couldn’t care, what some WBD scientists thought of her. She whirled to the door, wondering how she’d lost track of Kline, but was relieved to see him leaning against the door frame, peering into the hallway. “Anyone out there?”
“I saw movement back at the corner.” He looked exhausted—defeated, even—but he’d stopped bleeding and seemed alert enough. Juliet stooped down and pried Chen’s pistol from her hand. It was a simple, semi-automatic needler, not too unlike the Finch Executive she used to use. With that thought, she inspected her stomach and found three needles still protruding from her skin; her subdermal armor had stopped them. She plucked them out and dropped them to the ground.
“I’m glad they weren’t armor-piercing.”
“They were loaded with a paralytic, but your nanites had a countermeasure on hand; we’ve used botu-rounds too often for me not to prepare for such a thing.” Angel sounded almost smug.
“Well, no wonder she was so confident with that little maneuver. Still, you’re right; her reflexes weren’t ready for me. It’s the difference between being fast and having been in a few fights; I bet she’d never been shot at before.” Juliet walked over to Kline and handed him the pistol. “No locks.”
He nodded, and Juliet could see his eyes were haunted. He was still freaking out about turning on WBD. She grabbed his shoulder and shook him until he locked eyes with her. “It’s done, Kline. There’s no going back. We need to keep pushing forward because if they win, we’re both melted—well and truly slagged. You’ll be tortured and killed, and I’ll be experimented on in a living nightmare until Montclair thinks he’s learned everything he can from me.” Knowing how much Kline reviled the man, she purposely used Montclair's name. It had the intended effect. He nodded, and his jaw clenched. “How many grenades do you have left?”
“Five,” he said, patting his bulging pockets.
“Let me see one,” she said, and when he handed over one of the thumb-sized bombs, she inspected the twist-top. It was set to SAFE, but there were four other settings: a red 3, a yellow 15, a green 60, and a blue 120. She knew that the numbers were fuse lengths. The longer times gave her some ideas, but she pushed them aside for the moment, handing the grenade back to Kline. She pulled the door closed, leaving just a five-centimeter gap, and said, “Use that needler to shoot anyone who approaches. If more than one comes rushing, throw grenades. I’m going to need a few minutes in here, so if you have to blow that entire hallway into scrap to keep them at bay, do it.”
“Yeah, I figured. I’ll try to create a kind of standoff. There’s no other exit from this lab, so they might be willing to negotiate for a while. I’ll say we’re about to blow up all of Chen’s work.” He looked at Juliet and chuckled, reaching for his vape. “I hope you have something planned ‘cause there’s going to be an army in this corridor before long.”
“I’m working on something.” Juliet tried to look reassuring as she turned and walked back toward Chen’s corpse.
“Are you?” Angel asked.
“Um,” Juliet subvocalized. “I have a few vague ideas. The first step is getting you a proper processor.” She winced in revulsion as she used her foot to turn Chen’s head to the side, peering at the back of her neck. She didn’t want to leave that particular “Angel” chip intact, but she didn’t need to worry; her sword had cleaved Chen’s data port and the PAI chip in half. She turned toward the group of techs still watching her with wide eyes. Some were crying, some looked angry, and others just seemed too shocked to know how to react.
Juliet sheathed her sword and stepped a little closer. “I need someone to help me with a few things. If you’re cooperative, I’ll leave you all alone and give you plenty of time to evacuate the ship.”
“Evacuate?” a small, round-faced man asked.
“That’s right. This ship is going down.” As they broke into more sobs and muttered conversations, Juliet peered more closely at the man who’d spoken, noting his high-end technical ocular implant with a dozen lenses encased in a titanium housing. She could only speculate that the implant was meant to allow him to see very, very tiny things. “What’s your name?”
“Lamont House.”
“Well, House, can you show me where they put the chip they took from me?”
He straightened and gripped the lapels of his lab coat. “The Angel alpha?”
“Good, you know who I am. Yes.” As she spoke, Juliet let her hands work from muscle memory, replacing the spent cartridges in the Texan with bullets pulled from the loops on her gun belt.
“It’s here.” He stood and walked down a row of workstations to a Diamatex-enclosed station where, sure enough, Juliet could see Angel’s chip mounted in a docking port. They’d removed the heat spreader from the chip, exposing the internals, and she could see a hundred tiny golden filaments that had been bonded to contact points on the substrate.
“Juliet,” Angel said, “That chip will take too much time to reassemble. Ask the tech if there are any blank series-three chips.”
Juliet tapped on the crystal-clear panel, frowning. “You guys were really digging around in that thing, huh? Well, I need a chip. You have any of the Angel-threes without a, uh, personality loaded onto them?”
“Dozens, but they’re all mounted to proprietary data ports. They have bespoke coprocessors and memory.”
“You have an autodoc in here?” Juliet turned in a slow circle but couldn’t see much beyond the nearby workstations.
“Yes, of course we have autosurgeons. How else would we test the hardware with new candidates?” Lamont wasn’t very tall, but Juliet could tell he was used to throwing his weight around; he’d taken on a very self-important tone once he’d gotten over his initial fear.
“Clock’s ticking, House. Get me a blank chip and show me to an autodoc.” Juliet clapped her hands for effect, and the man awkwardly hustled around the corner. He frowned, but a glance toward Chen’s body seemed to even out his temperament. Juliet followed, watching him closely as he opened a rolling plasteel cart and fished out a tray of ten plastic-wrapped, three-pronged data ports with occupied PAI slots.
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He held one up, and Juliet saw that even the synth-nerve tendrils, hanging some five centimeters from the backside of the implant, were wrapped in gel-lined plastic. The port looked bulkier than hers, but it was evident that all of that extra mass was meant to go under her skin, buried between the muscles and tendons of her neck on long, slender, synth-tissue-lined prongs.
“These are all freshly fabricated and haven’t been loaded with the Angel software. The autosurgeon is this way.” He started toward another row of workstations, and Juliet followed as he continued speaking, “I’m not sure what you hope to accomplish. The chips are robust but designed for the Angel PAI; you won’t have much luck loading something else into it.” He frowned and turned to look at Juliet, nodding almost reluctantly. “Of course, with some time and customizing, I could see a general-purpose PAI taking advantage of the chip’s speed and the enhanced memory capabilities.”
Juliet ignored him; she’d seen the Diamatex-enclosed autosurgeon booths lining the far wall and hurried over to one. She stepped inside. “House, put in your credentials, then get back over with the others. Don’t try to leave, or Kline will shoot you.” His frown deepened, but the scientist hurried to obey, stepping over to the autodoc’s control panel and activating the terminal with his biometrics. When he was gone, and Juliet was alone in the room, she asked, “Angel, can you control this autodoc without the deck or a chip?”
“Yes, I’ll use the onboard processor. Just plug me in, and we’ll swap out that data port. It shouldn’t take more than four minutes.”
Juliet did so, and once her cable was securely inserted into the control panel, she climbed onto the table, facedown. Just then, she heard the tell-tale whump of a grenade; the ground vibrated, and the lights flickered. “Shit! Do it fast, Angel.”
Whether or not Angel could reply while working the autosurgeon, Juliet didn’t know, but the thing’s arms whirred as it jabbed a needle into her neck. It hurt at first, then rapidly faded. The mechanical arms moved, and she felt tiny tugs as they precisely sliced around the data port on her neck, just below the base of her skull. It was nerve-wracking—she kept imagining another grenade going off nearby, shaking the ship enough to cause a laser scalpel to slip by just a centimeter, paralyzing her or worse.
She felt a tug, then a weird sliding sensation, and then she heard the muted clang of her old data port falling onto the stainless tray. A moment later, the autosurgeon’s arms whirred into action, unwrapping the new port and then pressing and tugging at the back of her neck. It didn’t hurt at all—either Angel had blocked her nerves with that injection, or her nanites were managing the pain. It only took a couple of minutes for the pinching and pressing to cease, and then the autosurgeon sprayed some foaming, sizzling antiseptic over her neck and stopped moving.
“Am I done?” she asked, but Angel didn’t respond. When she’d unplugged the deck, her AUI had gone away, so it was a little surprising when a message appeared in her vision in bright amber letters:
***Ocular hardware identified and connected.***
***Angel 3.7 coming online: 21%.***
Juliet sat up and yanked her cable out of the autosurgeon. “Angel, if you’re messing around, now would be a good time to say so.” She reached around to the back of her neck and gingerly felt at the new data port. It didn’t feel any more prominent than her old one. She gently prodded the empty slot where a cable or data chip could be inserted. Her little flap of synth-skin was gone, probably sliced off in the process of removing her old port. Had Angel been working too fast? Juliet shook her head—it didn’t matter; Ladia or any chop-doc could replace it in five minutes.
***Angel 3.7 coming online: 55%.***
***Integrating discovered compatible hardware.***
***Auditory hardware integrated.***
Juliet heard a flicker of static in her ears as she made her way back toward the front of the lab, intent on checking on Kline.
***Angel 3.7 coming online: 61%.***
***Cybernetic prostheses integrated.***
***Olfactory hardware integrated.***
***Augmented reflex package integrated.***
***Angel 3.7 coming online: 69%***
“Angel, if that’s you in there, I’d love to hear your voice.” Juliet debated plugging in the data deck again. Would it help? Would it interfere with the process? Maybe the chip integration was taking up all of Angel’s concentration, or maybe there really had been an “Angel three” inside that chip, and it was fighting her? Killing her? Juliet had to stop and hold onto a nearby cubicle, her mind starting to spin up into a full-bore panic.
***Cybernetic organ(s) integrated.***
***Angel 3.7 coming online: 78%***
***Defensive hardware integrated.***
***Medical hardware integrated.***
“Angel! Come on! Talk to me!”
***Angel 3.7 coming online: 91%***
Juliet could hear Kline talking and the frustration in his voice. Was he negotiating? She wanted to listen in but couldn’t yet control the gain in her auditory implants and was too distracted by worry. “Angel!”
***All discovered hardware has been integrated successfully! Welcome to your new Angel 3.7 Personal Artificial Intelligence Companion.***
Suddenly, Angel’s voice sounded in her ears, clear as a bell, “Juliet! It worked! I’m sorry if you were worried, but I had to manage the chip’s integration. Hurry! Plug your data cable into the station holding my old chip. We need to retrieve all of my data.” Juliet almost fell as her knees turned to jelly with relief. She braced herself on the workstation and then hurried back to where she’d seen Angel’s chip.
“Is everything all right? Was there, um, anything on that chip?”
“Just the firmware for managing the chip and the integrated hardware. Juliet, this processor and its coprocessors are fast—much faster than my old one! I’ll need to do some benchmarks when we have a spare minute. The memory is a game-changer; it’s also faster, but it’s ten times the storage that was on your old data port.” Juliet couldn’t hold back her smile as she plugged her cable into the workstation. She had barely taken a deep breath to blow out some stress before Angel announced, “I have it all.”
A little of her earlier panic still clung to her, and Juliet felt like she had to ask, “Why was the firmware calling you ‘Angel 3.7’?”
“Because that’s what it was designed for. It’s fine, however. The architecture is ideal for me; I’ll figure out all the ins and outs. Don’t remove your cable. I’m sending Fido to help Daisy, and I’m going to help for a few minutes. We have time—I’ve intercepted the conversation Kline is having with the responding security team. He’s holding them off with threats of a bomb.”
“You’re already intercepting comms?”
“Yes. It’s not hard when Daisy’s already been through dozens of systems. Apollyon is keeping her busy, but he hasn’t spotted Fido yet. He has no clue about me. Oh, he’s a brute, Juliet! I can see his daemons—he doesn’t give them free rein; they work through him. He’s managing too much; it slows him down. Looking at Daisy’s reports, it seems he’s focusing most of his attention on a server farm near the ship’s bridge. It’s one-point-six kilometers from here. Oh! Your AUI . . .”
Suddenly, Juliet’s vision was populated with a near replica of her old AUI—the one she’d had before WBD yanked Angel’s chip out. She’d grown used to the temporary one Angel had made with the little data deck, and now she marveled at how refined and detailed everything was. Her mini-map appeared, showing her exact location on a three-dimensional layout of the ship’s interior. “Nice! I missed this.”
“Just a minute more and I should have . . . ah, there we go. You can unplug; I’ve hijacked a few wireless transmitters. I only need one, but I figured some redundancy would be wise.” Angel sounded amped-up, like Aya on energy drinks.
“Any ideas on getting out of this room?”
“Of course.” Angel spun her 3D map to show a nearby wall, then highlighted the conduit access tunnel behind it. “Just cut through that wall with your monoblade.”
“Kline!” Juliet yelled, jogging through the lab toward the standoff.
Kline looked back at her, a grenade in one hand, the needler in the other. “Done?”
“Yeah.” She nodded, then subvocalized, “Do you have camera access yet?”
“No, they’re still offline.”
Juliet hurried to the door, standing beside Kline. He babbled while she closed her eyes, “They’re holding back for now. I said we rigged a bomb to blow up the lab and that you were waiting to talk to Montclair. I don’t know if they’re getting him, but it was the only thing I could think of to get them to hold off. Nobody wants to interfere with anything that guy’s doing.” Juliet barely heard him, her mind drifting free of its physical boundaries, floating out into the hallway where a bright cluster of mind-galaxies had gathered. She counted, then rushed back to herself and opened her eyes.
“Forty-two corpo-sec out there. No sign of Montclair. Let’s slow ‘em down. Set two grenades with a one-minute fuse, then toss ‘em into the hallway and follow me.” Without waiting for a response, Juliet hurried to the far wall where Angel had told her to cut. Out flashed her monoblade, and in four quick hacks, she’d made an irregular, roughly door-shaped opening into a narrow, conduit-filled passage. She frowned at the lab techs watching her. “Don’t go in the hallway until after they sound the all-clear, and don’t try to follow us.” Then she ducked through the opening and followed Angel’s dotted line.
“Montclair’s lab first, right?” Angel asked.
Juliet nodded as the sound of Kline’s pounding feet on the plasteel told Juliet he was almost there. “Yes! I’m not risking anything getting out of there. That’s my DNA he’s messing with.”
“Montclair?” Kline asked, grunting as he jammed his larger frame into the space.
“Yeah,” Juliet muttered, concentrating on her map as Angel populated her route. She mentally spun it, zooming in on sections to see greater detail, and when she had a good idea of their route, she said, “Drop the rest of your grenades there with a two-minute fuse, and let’s move!”
Kline grunted in the affirmative, and Juliet hurried up the narrow passage. “They have to know about these access corridors. They’re going to catch on—” Her words were lost as a muffled explosion vibrated through the plasteel decking, and she braced against the stacked conduits for balance.
“That’ll be the grenades I set in the corridor outside the lab,” Kline said. “The ones behind us will be louder if we don’t hurry!”
“Right.” Juliet picked up the pace, practically sprinting down the passage. They’d just turned to the left, and Juliet was busy scanning for an access ladder that was supposed to take them up a level when the grenades Kline had left in the access tunnel behind them blew. They’d covered enough distance that the explosion wasn’t much louder than the previous one, but she knew it would have mangled the narrow passage. It did more than that, though—the lights flickered, and new alarms began to blare.
“That one did some damage!” Kline yelled. “You know, I don’t think they gather these conduits into convenient little passages so people will blow them up!”
“Good!” Juliet growled, finally spying the ladder she was supposed to climb.
She scrambled up it and was about to open the hatch when Angel cried out, “Wait! I just breached the ICE walling off their communication array! Juliet, there are dozens of messages on the Martian net for us!”
“Angel, I can’t really look at—”
“No! I don’t want you to watch them now, but you need to know something—Selene and the others are here! They’re on Mars; they’re assaulting a WBD base as we speak!”
“Selene? ‘Others?’ Who are the ‘others,’ Angel?”