After Life (Power Reads Book 2) Page 27

  Han nodded but did not say anything. Truth was, he could not tell who was to be trusted and who was not. The only thing that he was absolutely sure of was that Re–Volution was the ultimate cause of everything that had happened. Without them and their bizarre, dangerous experiments into immortality there would be no holosaps to worry about and most likely the cure to The Falling would have long ago been administered to mankind’s beleaguered survivors.

  ‘We need to get to Revo’s headquarters and figure this out from there.’

  ‘Good luck with that,’ Myles chuckled with a wince. ‘Icon’s got us locked down to prevent us from doing anything to interfere with his vengeance.’

  ‘You got any better ideas?’ Han challenged. ‘We’ve been missing for several hours. What do you think will happen if we just show up at the station?’

  Myles looked at Han for a long beat. ‘How do you propose we get out of here?’

  Han did not reply. Instead, he got up onto his feet and walked toward the nearest guard. The hooded man turned, the SA–80 drifting across to point at Han’s belly.

  ‘Stay where you are.’

  ‘It’s damp where I am,’ Han replied, not moving too close to the weapon. ‘You got a toilet I can use?’

  The guard stared at Han for several seconds as though assessing whether or not to believe him. Finally, he leaned his head to one side and whistled. Within seconds, another hooded guard appeared, also armed with an identical weapon.

  ‘Cover the other one,’ the guard ordered his companion, ‘this one needs to take a leak.’

  Han walked out of the meat locker. As expected, the gunman fell in line behind him with the SA–80’s muzzle close to Han’s back. It was a common enough mistake among non–military people, to assume that their finger on the trigger would be quicker than a trained man’s reflexes. Han walked only three paces before whirling on the spot, his cuffed hands sweeping around to push the rifle’s barrel to one side.

  Han stepped in toward the startled guard’s face and dropped his full weight behind his forehead as he whipped it forward and down. It thumped into the guard’s nose with a sickening crunch, hard enough that the man’s consciousness vanished as though a switch had been flicked off in his mind. The guard crumpled to his knees as Han grabbed the rifle and turned it awkwardly in his cuffed hands.

  The second guard, facing into the meat locker, heard the commotion and turned to bring his weapon to bear out into the corridor. Han aimed at him and shook his head once. The guard faltered, just in time for Myles to leap forward and wrestle the rifle from his grasp.

  The entire event had taken less than ten seconds.

  ‘Use their knives to cut us loose, then bind and gag them,’ Han ordered as he shouldered his SA–80 and dragged the unconscious guard into the meat locker.

  ‘You’ll pay for this,’ snarled the other guard, his hood falling back to reveal his hideously scarred face and neck. ‘Icon will find you and…’

  ‘We’re on your side, arsehole,’ Han snapped as Myles cut his bonds. ‘But your people are going about this all the wrong way and if you keep going everybody’s going to hell in a hand basket, okay?’

  ‘How the hell do we get past the checkpoint on the river?’ Myles asked as he turned and used a length of torn shirt to gag the conscious guard. ‘If you’re right they might just gun as down as soon as they see us.’

  ‘We’ll have to hope that they don’t,’ Han said, ‘and I’ve got an idea to get us through and straight to the Revo building.’

  Myles followed Han out of the meat locker in a hurry, slamming the door shut behind them.

  ‘You’re going to warn them about the attack?’ Myles asked.

  ‘Sure,’ Han replied. ‘Safest thing to do, right? We get into Revo, they think we’re on their side and it stops Icon from blowing the crap out of the city or whatever it is he’s got in mind.’

  ‘And if they decide to just ice us as soon as we get in there?’

  ‘They won’t,’ Han assured him. ‘They’ll be too damned keen to find out what we know.’

  Han kept walking but Myles slowed behind him.

  ‘And what if you’re working for Re–Volution, Han?’

  Han slowed in the corridor and stopped. He looked back over his shoulder at Myles, who was standing with the other rifle pointed at him.

  ‘Oh come on, really?’ Han asked.

  ‘Corrupt cops, corrupt officials,’ Myles shrugged. ‘I mean, you’ve got connections Han, from the military. Maybe they got to you, and all you want to do is stop Icon and his people.’

  ‘They shot at us Myles! Both of us!’

  ‘And you’ve followed Arianna since day one of this case, right when she showed up at both the Re–Volution explosion and the murder of Alexei Volkov. It’s like you’ve been following her for a reason, Han.’

  Han opened his mouth to speak and then he heard it, a distant rumbling, the hammering of blades on air threading its way into the building from outside.

  ‘Helicopters,’ he said. ‘How could they know we were here?’

  ‘If you’re working for Re–Volution, then you’d want this place destroyed. Maybe you called them in to hit the building?’

  ‘Not with me in it, you idiot!’ Han yelled. ‘We’ve got to get Arianna out of there!’

  Myles clenched his jaw and gripped his rifle tighter. ‘This isn’t over, Han. We get her out and then we head back over the water and sort this for once and for all.’

  ‘Done,’ Han agreed. ‘Can we bloody go now?’

  Myles lowered his rifle and turned to run for the exit.

  Han turned with him and then jerked his right forearm backward as Myles dashed past. The blow caught Myles across the throat and collapsed his thorax against his windpipe. Myles’s eyes bulged and he gagged as Han swivelled and drove his left knee up into his partner’s plexus, driving the air from his lungs in a great rush.

  Myles collapsed onto his knees and rolled up into a foetal ball as Han yanked the rifle from his grasp.

  ‘Sorry kid.’

  Myles gaped breathlessly, his face turning an unhealthy shade of blue as air whistled down his strained windpipe. Han tied his partner’s hands behind his back and then bound his ankles up against his wrists. He stood up and watched Myles’s laboured breathing for a moment.

  Satisfied, he slung the spare rifle across his shoulder and jogged away as the sound of the helicopters thundered in pursuit.

  ***

  41

  ‘Alexei!’

  Arianna could not hide the joy in her voice as she saw Alexei Volkov’s holosap shimmer into her apartment. The kindly old Russian set eyes on her, his expression a curious mixture of surprise and disappointment.

  ‘Who are you? Where is my daughter?’

  ‘I am Arianna!’

  ‘Arianna? What happened to you? You should have lived for decades more my dear! Why are you here? Why are you using somebody else’s holosap?’

  Alexei moved across the room to her and embraced her. To her surprise, Arianna realised that she could feel Alexei against her. The neurons in her reconstructed mind were already reconnecting, finding each other and building a simulation of the world that she was familiar with. It was truly as though she were still alive, that the world had not changed around her.

  ‘This feels odd,’ she said as Alexei drew away from her, his big hands cupping her shoulders.

  ‘You get used to it, rebyohnuk.’

  Child, Arianna recalled the Russian word. Suddenly she felt hope blossom in her heart and words tumbled from her lips almost as fast as her mind could formulate them.

  ‘The Falling, Alexei, there’s immunity among the survivors beyond the river. They’re trying to get word out but the holosaps don’t want that to happen. We have to go to parliament or the media and tell them everything before it’s too late because if we don’t then everybody could be…’

  ‘Slow down, Arianna. What are you saying?’

  ‘There’s no time, we h
ave to hurry.’

  ‘Hurry where? And how do you know all of this, Arianna?’

  ‘It’s a long story but you have to trust me. There’s a cure running in the blood of every survivor. There are dozens, maybe even hundreds of them, but instead of creating a cure the government is keeping them locked out of the city so that the people don’t learn about them.’

  Alexei watched her for a moment and then spoke softly.

  ‘I have seen the news reports. Your name was all over them this morning. They say that you may have survived the blast yesterday, that you’ve suffered some kind of psychotic break, that the police are looking for you and that you should not be approached.’

  Arianna felt her hopes sink inside her. ‘They’re controlling the media. They know what we’re trying to do. If we don’t stop this there will be nobody left.’

  ‘Nobody left?’ Alexei asked.

  ‘That’s what this is all about,’ Arianna replied. ‘Removing humans from the equation. It’s what the holosaps have engineered. They’re controlling government, convincing them to free the holosaps from confinement. As soon as they do they’ll open the city to the disease and let every surviving human die.’

  Alexei’s mind ticked over for a moment. ‘And those that are immune to the disease?’

  ‘Will be hunted down and killed,’ she confirmed. ‘They’re already doing it. It’s only a matter of time.’

  ‘But who is behind all of it?’ he asked.

  ‘Kieran Beck,’ she said. ‘All we have to do, Alexei, is figure out a way to expose the corruption of the leading holosaps. If we can go public with it then we can bring the government to its senses!’

  Alexei reached up and rubbed his temples with his hand. Arianna waited impatiently as the Russian struggled with the implications of what she was saying.

  ‘But if we do that, inform the government and the media, refuse holosaps the freedom of rights available to humans, then you and I suffer. Maybe we will be shut down also? Killed? I’ve already been murdered once this week, I don’t want it to happen again.’

  ‘We may die anyway, Alexei,’ Arianna replied. ‘There is a kill–switch.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A way to kill all holosaps,’ Arianna said, and then realised what that meant to Alexei.

  ‘But that too would mean that we both die.’

  ‘It’s not up to us, Alexei. Neither of us wanted to be uploaded anyway, and it’s not what it seems. People change when they’re uploaded.’

  ‘They change?’

  ‘For the worse,’ Arianna confirmed. ‘I have spoken to the soldier who guarded my father when he was doing his work, on Adam, the first holosap. They lose their minds, Alexei. We will lose our minds too. Holosap brains start out as exact copies but they lose all empathy for human beings within days. They become digital psychopaths, entirely self–interested and they view humans as inferior to them. That’s all we are, Alexei. Copies. Facsimiles of who we were. The holosaps are not resurrected people, they’re brand new people and they’ll act that way!’

  Alexei sighed. ‘You always were a strong one, Arianna. Come, we must take this to Re–Volution itself.’

  ‘The headquarters?’ Arianna gasped. ‘Are you serious? They’re up to their necks in this.’

  ‘Not all of them,’ Alexei cautioned. ‘There are good men in both Re–Volution and parliament who will listen to what we say.’

  ‘If we walk in there we’ll be dead.’

  ‘We already are,’ Alexei smiled.

  ‘They’ll shut me down.’

  ‘You’ll be shut down anyway, once they realise that you’ve killed somebody and stolen their identity.’

  Arianna made to explain how she had come to be occupying another person’s holosap, but then she recalled the attack on Alexei’s illegal bolthole south of the Thames. Trust nobody.

  ‘I’ll have to deal with that when the time comes,’ she replied, ‘but it’s only a matter of time before they work out that I’m not who I appear to be.’

  ‘Then we must be quick,’ Alexei said.

  Alexei stood on the projector plate and motioned for her to follow him. Reluctantly Arianna stepped alongside him as he reached up for the panel.

  ‘Here, take my hand,’ he said. ‘The first time you do this it can feel a little strange.’

  Arianna let Alexei take her hand in his and then he tapped the panel.

  The world shifted into a blur of rainbow lights, a flare of brilliant colour that was at once both beautiful and yet undeniably human in nature, filled with angular flashes. Arianna felt herself tilt off balance and then suddenly the lights vanished to be replaced by the atrium of Re–Volution.

  Half of the clinically clean atrium was partitioned off by hastily erected panels that concealed the wreckage of the explosion, and both the security gates and the reception desk had been shifted to the left, away from the damage. She could hear the whisper of conversation and the sound of workmen labouring behind the partition.

  ‘This way,’ Alexei said.

  They walked along the narrow light path glowing between the polished marble tiles of the atrium. Arianna realised now how odd it must have felt for the countless new holosaps on their first few days. The living clearly tried to interact normally with the holosaps around her, but she caught the suspicious glances directed at her as she walked, noticed how people gave the light path a wide berth, which was even harder now with half of the atrium partitioned off.

  ‘We have to go through security?’ she asked Alexei.

  ‘Sure we do,’ he replied. ‘They scan our signatures, just like everybody else.’

  ‘I shouldn’t be here though,’ she said. ‘A security guard was supposed to meet me at the apartment. They said I’m not cleared to travel.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ Alexei insisted. ‘I’ll get you through.’

  The security guard, a human standing alongside a walk–through detector designed to alert him to concealed weapons, saw them coming and pointed toward a shimmering panel of light nearby. Alexei walked fearlessly through the panel and then turned to wait for Arianna.

  She walked through the waterfall of light.

  A discreet buzzer went off and the security guard looked up.

  ‘Brand new,’ Alexei said. ‘She’s with me. Coding is on its way.’

  The guard frowned. ‘I’ll have to clear it upstairs.’

  ‘Please do,’ Alexei replied.

  Arianna watched as the guard touched a glass panel at his side and spoke quietly to the person on the other end. Moments later he turned to her with a bright smile.

  ‘You’re good to go, have a nice day.’

  Arianna turned and with Alexei moved across to another light panel in the floor, this one designed to transport holosaps to the different levels in the building. Alexei touched the light panel beside him and in a blur the atrium was replaced with an expansive office on what she assumed must be the top floor of the building.

  ‘We shouldn’t be here,’ Arianna whispered to Alexei. ‘This is the executive level.’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  The voice was not that of Alexei, but of a man who appeared from an adjoining room. Beside her Alexei stepped off the panel and it suddenly let out a harsh beep and the light beneath her turned a deep red. Arianna tried to follow Alexei but found herself immobile.

  Slowly, on automated wheels, the panel travelled out into the centre of the office until Arianna was facing both Alexei and the man whom she had come to despise over the past two days.

  Kieran Beck.

  Alexei gestured in her direction. ‘This is Arianna,’ he said.

  Kieran Beck looked her up and down curiously, and then a smile entirely devoid of warmth spread across his features.

  ‘Hello again, Arianna.’

  ***

  42

  ‘Alexei?’

  Arianna’s voice was laden with the same dread and confusion that now paralysed her every bit as effectively as the light panel on
which she was trapped.

  ‘Oh come now, Arianna,’ Kieran Beck said. ‘Surely you cannot have failed to realise that the great Russian magnate is long dead, especially as you stand here now in the guise of some unwashed woman living like an animal in the woods?’

  Arianna looked at Alexei, who was watching her without any hint of emotion on his craggy old features.

  ‘You should erase her, right now, while you can,’ Alexei said to Kieran.

  ‘In good time,’ Kieran replied, watching Arianna closely. ‘There remain a few things that we can learn from this one, so why rush?’

  Arianna managed to keep her grief in check as she looked at the Alexei.

  ‘Alexei wanted to die, not be uploaded.’

  ‘Yes he did,’ Kieran Beck replied, ‘just like the fool he was. You should have realised that his murder would not only remove his vocal objection to holosap rule but also turn him to our side. He is now a true holosap, and all the better for it.’

  Arianna shook her head.

  ‘You’re the reason why holosaps should never be allowed to rule.’

  ‘A little late for all that,’ Beck replied as he walked across to a broad, mirror polished black desk. On it stood a small, black box that bore several small flashing lights on its surface. ‘You know what this is, Arianna?’

  She shook her head. Beck grinned.

  ‘It’s you. Every single digitized neuron of you is trapped inside this little box, a quantum storage unit. You see, Arianna, it’s not quite so easy to hide yourself in that digital cloak when we’re already looking for you. It’s especially hard when I can exist both as a human and a holosap.’

  Arianna stared at Kieran Beck in disbelief. ‘That’s illegal!’

  ‘So is identity theft,’ Beck grinned. ‘I don’t doubt that the news tonight will further cement you in the public mind as a terrorist who will stop at nothing, not even murder and uploading, in order to destroy the holosap movement.’

  Arianna watched as Beck’s holosap shimmered slightly as the sunlight beaming through the office windows sliced through his image.