Polis Kyiv, Polytechnic Institute

Daria Vasilevskaya, August 12, 2049, 11:24 AM

The security room wasn’t far. A simple, nondescript door with just a number on it, no door plates. At first glance, it didn’t seem any more protected than the other rooms on this floor.

“So, what do I know about this place?” Dasha stopped in front of it and examined the electronic lock. There was a closed cover with markings next to it.

“It’s got to be protected only from the outside because people don’t operate these from the inside anymore… Trying to physically break the lock is out of the question; the security system would just lock both the door and the control consoles inside. The only way to unlock them then would be by using special police tools, which doesn’t work for me. It’s a two-step access – the hardware key enables a wireless authorization… which I don’t have. But it also unlocks a niche with one or two direct connection ports – I could work with that. All right, I gotta try this.”

She tapped on the closed plastic cover.

“Hmm… Judging by the markings, it’s an XCJ-2b port. That means two second type smarts with XC adapters. Man, what a piece of old junk!”

While Dasha was thinking, her hands operated on their own, taking a couple of one-meter-length smarts out of the backpack. Finding XC adapters wasn’t easy because all the connectors were buried somewhere on the bottom.

There! The fingers moved to attach the XC adapters confidently. They even put a dual port mount – a small thing, but it made the connection much easier.

The girl produced another short smart out of her backpack, a regular one, with a modern UTD connector, as well as a universal hardware access key emulator. She just needed to put them together and voilà.

“I could go for some ‘Nebula’ right now… Or a ‘Jackson,’ at least.” The girl wistfully sighed, remembering her treasures in the medicine cabinet at home. “No, never mind boosters! Just give me damn basic painkillers!”

The backpack was dropped onto the floor. She held the two smart cables with adapters in her left hand, while her right one gripped the short smart connected to the hacking device. Dasha did some breathing exercises, freeing her mind, separating herself from pain and entering a state of trance.

Time had slowed down.

{Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary…}

The girl sharply lowered her head, exposing the base of her skull.

{Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore…}

She put her hands behind her neck. Holding the cables’ connectors, Dasha felt around for the locks with her thumbs and opened the ports.

{While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping…}

The smarts connected to the sub-brain’s interface ports with three consecutive clicks.

{As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door…}

A series of programs started via AR. She focused all of her attention at the key point in anticipation, waiting for signal and loading many utilities.

{‘Tis some visitor,’ I muttered, ‘tapping at my chamber door’…}

The word ‘Ready!’ finally came on.

The emulator had been plugged into the electronic lock. Four Ravens started a brazen brute-force attack. A few seconds passed. The LED light flickered. The protective cover slid aside, exposing two old-fashioned XC ports.

{Only this and nothing more.}

The XC adapters had been inserted into the ports.

Time sped up.

The main question at this point was who will be faster: the Moira supercomputer with all its available resources combined with Dasha’s intelligence and shrewdness, or the security system of the Kyiv Polytechnic University. If they took too much time, the door would be closed for all eternity, and Dasha could forget about getting access to the cameras.

“Doesn’t matter if the malware leaves traces now. The world has changed. Everything’s changed!” The girl leaned against the wall with both hands; she couldn’t squat or assume a steadier position at the moment. “I’ve always felt like different parts of me existed in different worlds. But something’s started to change today. Something that could merge all those worlds into one!”

“Open!” Her quiet voice echoed faintly down the hall.

And the door opened.

The lights came on; the room didn’t have any windows. A large control suite with consoles for three operators stood in the center – probably just a relic of the past. No one uses humans as security guards in public places anymore, only artificial intelligence. But that actually worked to Dasha’s advantage.

The girl disconnected the cables and put them away, picking up her backpack off the floor. She sighed and entered the room, closing the door behind her with a touch of a sensor button.

“I don’t know how much time I have, but not very long, clearly… And my shoulder is getting worse. I wonder if I broke any bones?” Rubbing the affected area, Dasha glanced around the room and spotted a small cabinet by the wall. “A first-aid cabinet! Doubt there are many useful things in it, but at least something for the pain.”

First, she came up to the desk and launched the terminal. Entering the room was the most difficult part; getting access to the console and system is much easier. A few solid backdoors would come in handy, she just needed to check their relevance.

As the system was booting up, the girl decided to take care of herself. Pulling off her T-shirt, she slung it over a chair and went to the first-aid cabinet, massaging her shoulder.

“D-damn, hurts like a mother!”

Looking down at her legs, Dasha sighed; the entire pant leg was torn from the upper thigh down and soaked in blood.

“What a terribly skimpy collection! Well, at least there’s something. Now that I think about it, it’s weird that there are drugs here. People don’t use this room!”

For starters, the girl took a pair of scissors, moved a stool closer and sat on it, extending her right leg. She hopelessly looked around for some water, but couldn’t find it in any form.

“Nothing to clean the wound with… The antiseptic alone isn’t enough… Shoulder hurts… This sucks…”

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Carefully piercing the fabric, Dasha cut the pant leg off. The hardest part was ahead – she had to rip the fabric off where it got glued to the many cuts, all the while swearing and cringing in pain.

Returning to the cabinet, she laid her hands on the antiseptic, cotton swabs, medical adhesive, and all the band-aids she could find. Next, the girl squirmed on the stool as she did her best to treat her wounds with the limited amount of gel, glue the two biggest cuts, and apply a band-aid.

At the end of the procedure, her leg was searing, and tears welled up in her eyes – but she had done it!

“Halfway through…” Dasha fidgeted, examining her shoulder joint in the cabinet’s mirror. “Just some abrasions, I think… A little swollen, and there’s gonna be a big bruise. But the arm moves fine, it just hurts. I guess I should count myself lucky – got away without any sprains, fractures, or dislocations. It’d be good to go to the hospital, though… But where am I and where is the hospital?”

“Oh, there’s some gel with a freezing effect, a teeny-tiny tube, of course. But I hope it’s enough for the shoulder. I’d have liked to treat the abrasions with the antiseptic, but I’ve already run out.”

After using up the gel, she threw the empty tube on the floor. Dasha took her frustration out on the rest of the cabinet’s contents and threw them as well, showing mercy only to a box of painkillers. She had to dry swallow the pill because there wasn’t a drop of water in her bottle left.

“Okay, what’s next?”

The plan to quickly snag a roboplatform and start preparing Moira for transportation had gone awry. Alisa and Max were still at the stadium too, looking at the map.

“I gotta make a call. Maybe Max is feeling better?”

She’d lost the portable camera on her mediaphone, but the main one was still usable. Dasha placed it on the shelf of the open medicine cabinet in front of her and pressed ‘Call’ in the AR menu.

“Alisa here,” the voice on the other end answered almost immediately. A picture came on: some kind of service room, from ‘first person’ again. A half-disassembled robot could be seen, most likely a CaTZ model three or four. A bunch of parts, cables, modules, metal plates and other things lay around.

“How’re you guys doing over there?” Daria asked. “I’m stuck at uni. There was a portal here, something really big, and military missile drones. And monsters are running around. I’ve bumped into one; still not sure why it didn’t kill me. Anyway, it’s bad, and I’ve been beaten the crap out of and scratched up. All over... Locked myself up in a security control room for now.”

“Sorry… I’ve seen a portal near the uni on the prognosis map, but the highest probability was outside the buildings.” Alisa continued actively working with the workbench’s mechanical arms. “The likelihood of a starting sphere appearing on the streets was greater than in the central building’s atrium… But I guess the calculating algorithm has its flaws. Either way, I should’ve contacted you the moment I’d gotten the information.”

“You have a prognosis map? Impressive!” Dasha said, finishing rubbing gel onto her shoulder. “I’d love to take a look. I only dug up a global science group based in Greenbelt. Interestingly enough though, they worked for corporations, states, and everyone basically, at the same time. I didn’t learn more because the invasion had started. But I’m more concerned about Max right now. How is he?”

“The explosion did a number on him, but he’ll live. I’ve done everything I could with the medbot. The only thing I can’t do without surgery and supplies is get my brother back on his feet, so he’s still paralyzed for now. He’s recovering at the moment, I think he’ll regain consciousness soon.”

“Praise Cthulhu! I’ve been worried sick.” Dasha gave a sigh of relief. “Dial me up when he wakes up? We’re still on track? Going to the hospital?”

“Yes to all. We’re not changing the plan. By the way, we’re already working on getting out of the stadium,” Alisa said, finishing installation of additional muscle tapes on the front limbs’ reinforced frame. “There are many monsters around, we can’t just stroll out of here. Nika went down to find us a car.”

“You talking about that cyborg girl? Nikola, right?”

“Yes. Nika, for short.”

“She’s cute… Okay, I’ll start working on my own escape.” The girl took out the last strip of healing band-aid from the cabinet. “I thought about using drones or a couple of bots at least, but… There’s nothing useful at hand. So, I guess I’m gonna have to make do with surveillance cameras. The ‘industrialists’ do have drones, though. Some of them aren’t half-bad… I’ll swipe a few…”

“Hmm…” Alisa slowly said in contemplation. “Don’t be shy, take all you can get; it’s crucial for our survival. When you’re there, call me, and we’ll go over everything.”

“Fine by me, the old life is over anyway.” Putting the band-aid in her pocket and taking her mediaphone with her left hand, Dasha closed the cabinet.

“Tell me though.” She headed to the operator’s chair, holding the camera in front of her. “You’re saying you have a prognosis for the portals? Where’d you get it? And how do those creatures behave when they come here? Maybe there’s analysis? Based on the footage? There’s already enough clips online. And what do they do when they arrive?”

“Yes, I got the prognosis on the darknet. As for the behavior, I’m still gathering info. A portal opens for a pretty short period of time. Thirty-one minutes twenty-seven seconds in the current record. If you don’t get in its way, that is,” the android girl said, backing up a little, because the workbench’s arms had begun installing protective polymer plates, covering the bot’s body. “During the first few minutes there’s some sort of protective field, if you shoot it, the object’s life shortens.”

“If something large comes out of it,” she continued, observing the assembly process, “and it gets killed before the body completely leaves the protective sphere, the portal will close in a few minutes. The larger the target, the faster it closes.”

“I see. I saw our military use a similar tactic.” Touching her shoulder and realizing that the gel had been absorbed, Dasha sighed and slapped a strip of band-aid on it. “Well, not really saw… I got scared and dashed… But I’d started a stream with my backup camera.”

“Yes, I saw it. In your case, the protective field was already down, but the military managed to deal with the nest.”

“Nest?” After sticking the band-aid, the girl moved her arm a little, checking if everything was okay.

“Well, there’s no definition for it yet. Simply put, a ‘nest’ is some kind of stationary base. The monsters bring anything organic to it, and that thing grows very fast. I don’t know what exactly it grows into yet, but the military prioritize its elimination.”

“That’s disturbing…” the girl pensively said. She had finished treating herself, putting her T-shirt back on. “So, perhaps there’s not too many monsters here. I’ll check with the cameras. But you guys are going to the hospital now, right?”

“Yes, unfortunately, we have to.” Alisa nodded sadly. “I’d have preferred to leave town as soon as possible. It’s getting more and more dangerous out on the streets. For now, the monsters are concentrated around the portals, but it’s only a matter of time. But first, I gotta finish making an attack bot and a couple of recon drones. It’s too dangerous to go outside blindly.”

“I understand,” Daria agreed, “I’m not gonna stick around here either. I don’t have any drones, but there are cameras, I just need to gain access to them. That’d allow me to get to the ‘Industrial Robotics’ section without bumping into any monsters. Anyway, if we put Moira onto a generator-powered platform and load it onto a truck…”

“Good idea, at minimum power it will work without external cooling. All right, take care of the platform, I’m gonna handle the transportation. Just checked, iDrive still works. We’ll take a heavy all-terrain Unimog. We should call now, so it would get there on time. I’ll do it to prevent any questions from a share service AI; I have a police volunteer account, a higher social status than yours.”

“By the way, can you send me the map of all the open portals and those likely to pop up in the next hour or two? So that I’d already have a prepared route when I get the platform to Moira.”

“I’ll do you one better: while you’re dealing with the cameras, I’m gonna create an app. You’ll get the map, radar, and zone detection with real-time refresh! I’ll also upload it to global so that there’s interaction from other people. Strange that no one has made something like this already.”

“Maybe those kinds of apps are being monitored by the powers that be. Corporations or the military. In any case, that app will come in handy for us even without the interaction,” Dasha concluded. “All right, I’ll call you when I’m done here.”

“Okay.” Alisa nodded. “By the way, I’ve already called a truck, you can see it on your map now.”

“Thanks.” The brunette saw her friend’s message and hung up. The gel had started to work: the pain in her shoulder had subsided.

“Let’s get one in for the road,” said the girl, habitually fishing out her vape from her pocket. “Who knows when I’ll be able to vape again… The smell is attracting, but the ventilation is ideal here.”

Dasha reclined in the chair, inhaled deeply and sent a wide jet of vapor at the ceiling. Then, sitting normally, she stared at the console.

“Makes sense; same ports as on the door. Already open, no locks, no covers, or additional layers of security. No complaints either.” She took another drag. “Good thing I don’t have to change smart cables, I’m good like this…”

Letting out a huge cloud of vapor for the last time, Dasha put away her vape and connected the cables. Moving her chair up and getting more comfortable, she closed her eyes, completely relaxing her face and body. Her lips whispered barely audibly,

{And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain

Thrilled me – filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;

So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating

Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door –

Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; –

This it is and nothing more.}

Dasha fell into virtual reality with full presence effect.

# Connection established.

# Welcome to the security system controller.

# Please authorize…