Crossing the compound brought back a slew of foggy memories in Suzanne’s mind. A part of her brain seemed to recognize each corner, each hall, each security camera that had been put to eternal sleep. Even without Byte’s instructions, and despite the return of the internal network, she found it easy to navigate her way around. Now that they were on their way, the research department was to be their next stop. And yet, something was off. Suzanne didn’t know why, but her current visual of the compound did not seem to align with the compound of her memories. She wondered if its lugubrious ambiance had the power to distort her memories to that degree.
The loud step of Erol’s armor echoed behind her. The archaeologist was a bit behind, preferring to stop and seal off each emergency lock with the help of the superhuman strength he had been granted by the exoskeleton, in addition to his bionic arm. “We are ready,” he told her, pointing with his finger towards an imaginary direction, a surefire sign that he was not yet used to the presence of his digital assistant.
A green arrow on the map displayed by her personal interface pointed Suzanne in the direction of a U-shaped corridor as well. But her interface was having more and more trouble updating. The issues had started when the internal network had been turned on. It was like something was creating an obstacle to her fluxes. Regardless, learning its origin was impossible.
Fortunately, their journey was visibly coming to an end. Going back up, if they ever were able to, would be another kettle of fish. But she preferred postponing that apocalyptic scenario for later.
Still as excited by the events of that day and their interminable exploration, the archaeologist rushed ahead of her. Without bothering to save his resources, he gutted the security locks at the end of that corridor and invited Suzanne to go into what comprised the neuralgic heart of the compound.
The underground monorail of the Lionheardt stood before them like the skeleton of Jormungand, the fabulous beast of Viking mythology. A metal abyss disappeared into the guts of the Earth and dominated the horizon before them. The rest of their path was located on the other side, almost one kilometer away.
Erol whistled and his echo replied to him. “How are we going to cross this one-way road to Hades's realm?”
Suzanne quickly uncovered a transportation pod. They tried for a long time to restart it, but its battery refused to come back to life. From the disillusionment that colored his face, the archaeologist would have clearly given his organic arm to pilot one of its engines.
“We are going on foot,” Suzanne proposed, approaching the metal rail.
“Not a chance. Even if I abandoned the breastplate. The path is barely thicker than the palm of my hand and plus…”.
There was something in the monorail to make even the most audacious of tomb raiders squirm one thousand years later. Nevertheless, she already had a different idea at the back of her head. “You can keep your armor. The boots are magnetic.”
“And for the upside-down part?” Erol squealed, white as a sheet.
Their acrobatics along the underground rails took longer than expected. Several times, the archaeologist had been obligated to stop, his head hanging in the emptiness, ready to throw up.
“An overpass—was an overpass too simple?” her companion grumbled, taking position on one of the exchangers with a trembling leg.
This allowed them to make a short pause. Despite the urgency, the view was breathtaking. Suzanne took advantage of their pause to describe the gigantic farm of alveolar superstructures they could see along the walls.
Inside, Creditors imprisoned in incubators now slept for eternity. Unable to hide her disgust, she confessed that the minds of these poor people supplied the computer memory for the servers of the Lionheardt. It was, apparently, a rather common practice when one couldn’t pay one’s debts. Right now, the hive was nothing but a macabre mausoleum bathed in half-light.
Tired of the morbid details, Erol began walking again and they managed to reach the opposite platform. Unfortunately, this side of the compound also offered a gloomy spectacle. It was obvious that some sort of uprising had taken place here too, right before the compound was confined by the supposed madness of Lionheardt. Dried up bodies, torn to shreds by high caliber bullets, littered the ground. Gigantic beetle robots lay among the corpses, emptied of their batteries.
“Sentinels V1,” Suzanne explained to him, stepping onto the platform. “Smaller than our dear Jinko, but if they still worked, we would be dead.”
“Charming,” Erol said, brushing against the armor of one of the steel monsters. “Strange that we are only coming across them now.”
“The operational Sentinels were only active in the heart of the compound. These combat bots were perfectly illegal. But big corporations like the Lionheardt didn’t worry about that sort of detail.”
Lowering herself at the level of their bodies, Suzanne examined the remnants of some white gowns and the plastic-covered security badges of the employees of the research department. Another subtlety the Lionheardt Corporation didn’t bother with.
“Were they... all like this?” Erol asked as he headed in the direction of the steel doors at the end of the pontoon.
“Who?”
“The corporations.”
“Human life had very little value in 2099. Everything was disposable and replicable,” Suzanne answered after joining him.
The steel doors of the research department were even more impressive than what she remembered. These here measured some ten meters in height and were of such hard alloy that when Erol touched them with the point of his blade, the sound drowned in the material itself. In front of such a hallucinating level of protection, they had no chance of getting through by force.
“And now?” Erol asked, leaning against the immaculate black surface of the shutters.
Suzanne didn’t get the chance to answer him, because Erol fell backwards just as soon as his shoulder had touched the steel. A clicking sound traveled through the doorway and the enormous steel shutters opened halfway, emitting an agonizing deathly rattle. This turned out to be their last dance, however, because once the door was fully ajar, its hinges collapsed and its two screens stood anchored in the dust, holding a precarious equilibrium.
His back to the ground, Erol swore as he was his habit. “Let me guess—they were open?” he asked, catching his breath.
Suzanne helped him get up despite the weight of his armor. “No. I heard the security’s mechanism.” Then, both managed to take shelter in a dark vestibule. “You must have pressed something or rather—”
“Or rather those who were marauding around the compound did…”
Instinctively, they lowered their voices.
“Why would they do that, though? I’m thinking they opened them by mistake,” Suzanne continued, imitating him.
“Possible. Do you think they have already reached the research center? Or worse, the command center!”
“They found another entry point? It’s very possible. We lost more time than predicted with the monorail.”
The corridor that stretched before them was poorly lit. The young woman counted several offices. On the ground, papers were mixed with the abandoned detritus. The premises were deserted. There was still no trace of their potential pursuers.
Erol and Suzanne discretely climbed the main corridor. Various Sentinels were strewn across the floor. They must have come against something much more powerful or heavily armed than they were. Two of them rested against the wreckage of another steel door. They had been pulverized by an explosive charge.
Taking the lead, the young woman arrived next to the mummified corpse of what appeared to have been a soldier. He wore a suit that resembled that of the security team, but it was decked out with an exoskeleton that covered his torso and shoulders. He too had been riddled with buckshot the size of golf balls. She noticed that he was missing a large portion of his skull. She recognized Martins, the head of security. “I knew this man, Erol. He was a friend.”
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The archaeologist put a hand on her shoulder. “He was a soldier. I don’t know what lies behind this door, but he must have given them a run for their money,” her companion comforted her awkwardly.
Suzanne penetrated inside the command hall of the New Dawn as she had done one thousand years before. “Thomas Lionheardt stood behind this door.” Like in her visions, the room was disproportionate in size and strangely similar to Byte’s basement. On their right stood dozens, if not hundreds of screens of various sizes. Below, the console that she had blown up lay under the debris. Lionheardt’s office, at the center of the room, was nothing more than a pile of broken glass surrounded by two Sentinels V2 beetles. From where she was standing, Suzanne saw nothing but the back of a chair. A tangle of cables and iron tubes stood enthroned above it, like a crown. It resembled a diving device. Suzanne approached it when Erol’s voice resonated behind her.
He was pointing with his finger towards an area hidden under the dust. A brown trail appeared. After examining it, she saw that it led to one of the offices to the right, in the corridor adjacent to the research center. The door of reinforced Plexiglas ceded easily and they were able to penetrate into a great cabinet in the shape of an octagonal prism overlooking the emptiness. Despite the dust, everything was implacably arranged. Each pen, each file was in its place between the trinkets and the photo-video frames. Only the corpse at the edge of the desk spoiled this tableau.
After a quick analysis, it seemed like the person had dragged themselves from Thomas’s office until here. Overtaken by doubt, Suzanne turned the mummy around, panicked at the idea of seeing the face of this place’s old master. But it was nothing.
“It’s the body of a woman. A small brunette. A secretary?” Erol asked.
“There were no more secretaries, Erol. Only AI.”
Suzanne examined the remains of the unfortunate soul. She was in a much better state than those executed in the pontoon or Martins. Her white blouse was stained with blood. A projectile had hit her a little above the heart, where once a badge had been located, which today had disappeared.
“Rather well preserved. The airlock being closed probably helped. She must have wanted to access the terminal. The tactile keyboard is covered in dried blood,” Erol said.
“Let me see. If it’s a Lionheardt ID, I should have access to it.” An icy hand seized Suzanne’s guts. She had a terrible premonition.
Her implant had restarted its normal activity, but ultimately the computer failed to recognize her. She asked herself if the detectors were perhaps far too damaged and blew on the small sensor to repeat the operation. The screen turned red. She was still denied access.
Angry, Suzanne grabbed the corpse and lifted it as if it weighed nothing. She positioned the dried-up skull in front of the detection device. All of a sudden, the panel turned green and the screens of the monitors turned on under Erol’s stupefied gaze. The computer, after a short restart procedure, displayed all the information it had on the person requesting access.
Suzanne remained frozen and dropped the corpse when own face appeared before her, as well as personal information pertaining to her identity. It was her full name: Suzanne Courtois. It had her birthdate, her university education, and all of her career trajectory. At the bottom right corner of her 3D face, a red label shone bright: dead.
“Dead? What does this mean?” Erol blurted out, after catching the corpse on the fly.
Meanwhile, the screen blinked and indicated that the computer would be restarted for an update.
At first, Suzanne didn’t know how to answer him. This information had been extracted from the implant. My implant, she thought, before she felt tears pool in her eyes. No, the one of the body… She once again seized the dried-up remains of the young woman. She held in her arms a Suzanne Courtois. “Why the hell do I possess the body and the memories of someone who is dead?” screamed Suzanne, drumming her fingertips on the console.
“Wait! Erol intervened. “Look, the terminal is working again. You may be able to extract something from there.”
The virtual desk of the computer had reappeared. The background displayed a photo of Suzanne and some other researchers. The main menu included several sub-files. Suzanne opened the most recent one. It was entitled “Homo_Novus,” but it was password-protected.
“Any ideas?” Erol asked.
She tried several times.
Tom. Lionheardt. Harvard. Lee. Yellow_suit… But nothing worked. Alpha_Centauri?
The file expanded, but the screen froze. Lines of code replaced the details of the directories as if the computer were rebooting, then it froze again and the speakers crackled. “You are not Suzanne!” remarked a synthetic voice coming from them. “And yet you resemble her like two drops of water.”
Suzanne preferred to stand her ground. Until she had actual proof to the contrary, she remained Suzanne Courtois: “Of course I am Suzanne!”
It laughed. It was a cold and mechanical laughter. “No. You are not.” The voice was modified, but she thought she recognized a familiar timbre. There was something in its intonation that brought up memories of a bygone era. “Suzanne is dead. You are the result number 031193.”
“Who are you?” Erol insisted, placing his hands on her shoulders.
“And you, who are you?” asked the AI.
Suzanne had no more patience for this game. She had already seized the keyboard when her implant told her that her internal network had been reconnected to the exterior.
Immediately, they were interrupted by a sharp robotic voice. A humanoid hologram in three dimensions appeared on the side of the console. “Suzanne! Do you hear me? Ah, it’s okay.” The cyborg was talking very fast, she seemed panicked. “Hey? Is anybody there?”
Suzanne and Erol jumped. It was Byte’s voice, talking through the loudspeakers of the armor. This time around, she was not contacting Suzanne directly through her implant.
“Byte! You are online!” Suzanne cried.
“Yes and I have bad news. Maev has penetrated into the compound and the system has been reestablished. I took advantage of that fact to access it a few minutes ago, but this means that Thomas Lionheardt has done the same.”
“Are you sure?”
“I detected his activity,” explained Byte. “I have also recuperated an enormous amount of information on the Josias and the New Dawn project. Some concern you and—”
“We don’t have a lot of time before the Paladins reactivate the missile,” Suzanne cut her short. Tears were streaming down her white cheeks.
“Suzanne? Is everything alright?” Byte asked.
She swallowed. How can I be alright? Nothing makes sense.
The young woman looked at the dried corpse of what once had been Suzanne Courtois and, according to the database, head professor of the bioengineering department of the Lionheardt Corporation.
“A cursed AI just told us that she is not Suzanne or I don’t know what. But we are not going to believe her crap, no?” Erol intervened.
“Does it have a program titled 'Homo Novus'?” asked the technomancer. Suzanne and Erol nodded. Silence followed. When Byte spoke again, her voice was trembling: “Are you sure you want to hear this?” Suzanne responded in the affirmative. Byte sighed. “Homo Novus is the name of an ultra-sophisticated cloning program.” She paused. “The reports that I have under my eyes indicate that the subjects have as their origin Suzanne D. Courtois and Thomas S. Lionheardt.” The portraits of the two researchers appeared on the computer screen. Spreadsheets unfolded, filled with numbers and symbols translating their respective genomes. “They underwent two major development axes within two exceptionally joined sectors of bioengineering and artificial intelligence.”
“I understand these words, but the rest …,” Erol said scornfully.
“Under the direction of Miss Courtois, clones were created in gelo-tubes and were stored through artificial sleep. The female clones in her likeness were endowed with superhuman strength and with a penchant for self-regeneration.”
Several files opened simultaneously. Among them, there were various images of disemboweled bodies with cables tying them to machines. There was also a video of flayed corpses with white skin, immersed in vessels of blue liquid resembling the strange liquid that had rebuilt her hand.
“They were synthetic beings, but nano-augmented organically,” concluded the young woman as she read the other files.
Suzanne hung on the technomancer’s every word. She could now explain what had happened in the acid lakes. But this did not tell her why she possessed Suzanne’s memories. Clones were not meant to have this feature.
“That’s insane—Suzanne is a clone? A clone of Suzanne? Who is dead,” commented Erol at her side.
Byte’s voice sizzled. “The rest is deeply encrypted. It requires a titanic level of access that only three people have: Suzanne Courtois, Tom Lionheardt, and another man. His name is Pierre-Marie Kanté. Does this name mean anything? I still have no information on this human being.”
Byte’s voice was very feeble. Her hologram had disappeared and the computer monitor was now a motionless purple screen. The speakers no longer produced a sizzling sound.
Then their contact was broken off.
“No! No! No, no, no!” Suzanne screamed, striking the glass desk.
“Easy there!” Erol interrupted her.
On the archaeologist’s fist, the tracking module of the armor blinked orange. A message in yellow letters appeared at regular intervals.
“It’s an alert,” he commented. “The Inquisition is—Suzanne?”
Suzanne didn’t worry about any of that. She had seized the monitor and before Erol had a chance to react, she threw all the electronic equipment through the room. With a loud noise, the terminal broke the wall and fell into the emptiness. Finally, she disappeared into the corridor that led to Thomas Lionheardt’s office.