Rubicon, page 19
So with every ounce of will she could muster, she palmed her way up the wall, legs trembling beneath her as she straightened. Surges of heat rolled from her scalp to her toes like waves of fire burning across her skin.
She glanced both ways and with burgeoning terror realized she was completely disoriented. She no longer knew which way led back to Medical.
Then she looked down at the jittering red path her HUD had painted beneath her feet. She squinted at the fragmented, stuttering line before realizing what it was.
Her Rubicon had plotted a course. A path to follow.
She sucked in a breath through clenched teeth. Put one foot in front of the other. Again.
She couldn’t pay attention to the route. She could only concentrate on the floor, on her feet, on staying upright, on breathing—in and out.
Finally, she arrived at the end of the line. Looked up.
Disbelief rolled through her under the torrent of heat. It hadn’t led her back to Medical, back to Daroga. The route ended at the foot of a hexagonal door. Her eyes burned as she struggled to focus on the wide black lettering stretching across it: INTELLIGENCE COMMAND—RESTRICTED ACCESS.
The path and the lines of her HUD flickered in and out, less and less stable with every passing second. Her heart hammered into her aching ribs.
She had to focus on getting her brain to comprehend why, or if she should try to go back, or where she even was …
But her brain was done, checked out. She couldn’t use it for anything other than to keep her heart beating.
So she did the only thing she could manage. Stumbling forward, she reached out. Her palm slipped across the door’s control panel as she sank into a black abyss.
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
Adriene woke to every muscle in her body aching. Cold sweat clung to her skin. But she felt cool again, finally.
She cracked open her eyes.
A soft haze of electric-blue light tinged the blackness. The back of her eyes throbbed while trying to bring the world into focus.
With a breathy groan, Adriene turned onto her side. The thin plastic pad beneath her squeaked as she sat up.
She stared down at the floor for a moment. Grasping the edge of the cot, she focused on the way the cool plastic crunched under her grip.
Heaving a sigh, she stood. She let her vision settle, then gazed around the expansive, rectangular room, the lighting dimmed to a soft, after-hours glow. Unlike the rest of the ship, the surfaces were steel gray, though equally as immaculate. Rows of long counters contained a multitude of tidy workstations with one or two monitors each and the occasional peripheral. A tech lab of some kind.
Sensing a blue glow over her shoulder, she turned around. The back wall loomed before her, over a dozen monitors hanging over a low console fit with tablet ports and holographic projection nodes. A sturdy workbench capped one end, its open shelving cluttered with supplies and tools; bandages, MREs, soldering irons, multimeters, pliers, scanners.
Her gaze drew back to the center console. A single active monitor at the bottom flashed indecipherable code alongside the flickering light from a nearby data drive.
She recognized that palm-sized device stacked beside almost a dozen others exactly like it. The “technology artifacts” she’d risked her life for—risked getting hybridized for. They were daisy-chained together with some frayed cabling that looked like it’d been jury-rigged using spare scrapper guts.
“You’re awake.”
Panic surged, and Adriene spun around, instinctively stepping back, calves bumping against the edge of the cot.
Between two dim beams from the overhead lights, something stood obscured in the patchy shadows. It took her a moment to process that something was, in fact, a someone. A man. A living, breathing man. At least … in part.
Augments covered most of his left side. An ocular implant on his left eye melded seamlessly into a cheek-and-jaw graft, masking the left side of his face. A metal plate ran down the left side of his neck then disappeared under the collar of his shirt. His left sleeve, rolled up past the elbow, revealed a sleek, dark metal cybernetic arm and hand. It could have been mistaken for armor, except the arm was too slim to be a covering over a real limb, and it hung too rigidly at his side. It didn’t move properly along with the rising and lowering of his chest.
She’d never seen someone so augmented before. She’d heard of it, sure—alloys, they were called. People addicted to cybernetics who undertook dozens of black market installations until they were more metal and plastic than flesh and bone.
But this man couldn’t be some augmentation junkie. He was a soldier—an officer, even. And he wore the light gray uniform of Command.
“You’re dehydrated.” The man’s rich voice rang steady, calm. He held a metal bottle out toward her. With his real arm, his human arm.
Adriene tightened a fist, trying to steady her trembling hands. Though her initial alarm had subsided, the residual from the spike of adrenaline still coursed through her veins.
With a few slow steps forward, she took the bottle from him, then retreated to the cot and took a drink. The cold water rushed down her throat, sending a welcome chill through her chest.
“Slowly,” the man warned.
Adriene slowed, then lowered the bottle and took a few seconds to catch her breath. “Who—” she began, her weak voice breaking. She cleared her throat and forced more effort into it. “Who are you?”
The man moved toward her, and a muted, metallic hum accompanied his steps. One of his legs seemed cybernetic as well, at least in part. She could only imagine the shit this guy had gone through to need half his body replaced.
He stopped in front of her at the edge of the light, and she had to crane her neck to match his gaze—he had to be almost two full meters tall. Though his augments were expertly fitted, light scarring marred the skin that met the edges of his facial grafts, short clawlike hatches all along the perimeter.
The hard lines of his cybernetics caught the glare of the light as he reached toward her with his right hand, his real hand. “Major Julen West.”
Adriene’s back straightened on instinct, along with a pang of recognition. She’d seen this major before, if briefly—the officer who’d been loitering in the back of the hardsuit briefing.
“Sergeant Adriene Valero, sir.” She shook his hand, surprised at its warmth. Considering he looked more machine than man, she’d expected his pale skin to be as cold and smooth as metal. “Sir…” she began, but drifted off, her addled thoughts muddling the question before she could form it. “I’m sorry, sir,” she continued quickly, “but I don’t remember how I got here. What happened?”
West’s real eye locked on her, a muted hazel, shaded in the dim light. “I found you in the corridor. You’d lost consciousness.”
Right. Fragments rushed back: Daroga patching her up, the flood of unbearable heat, stumbling her way through the halls. Her glitching Rubicon, guiding her way to “Intelligence Command.”
Goose bumps rippled across her skin with a draft of air. She grazed her forehead with her fingertips. “Did something go wrong with my Rubicon?”
The major inclined his head, a spark of light reflecting off his facial graft. “Of a sort, yes. The implant was … overtaxing your system. Though forced to establish a physical connection, I was able to make the needed repair without incident.”
Adriene’s fingers drifted to her temple. “You fixed it?”
He turned away to walk deeper into the room. “I’m sorry we had to meet under these circumstances, Sergeant.”
Adriene stood unmoving, muscles bound up by her racing thoughts.
West returned with a metal stool. It grated against the floor as he placed it beside her.
She carefully sat down, and the major held out a silver MRE packet. “Slowly,” he warned again.
Her stomach groaned at the sight of it. She tore open the pouch and bit off a too-large chunk of the grainy food bar, hyperaware of the loudness of her chewing as Major West silently watched, real and metal fingers entwined, waiting patiently.
She finally gulped down the bite, then took a slow drink of water. She glanced over her shoulder to the hexagonal white door across the room. “Sir, are you part of Intel?”
“Yes.”
Adriene eyed him expectantly, but he didn’t elaborate. “But you were able to fix my implant? I thought Daroga dealt with all that.”
West arched his back and exhaled a heavy breath as he crossed his arms. “Mr. Daroga deals with the day-to-day administration, yes. Though my current responsibility with Flintlock is intelligence, I am also R&D lead abeyant for all of the 505th.”
R&D lead … And her VI had led her directly to him.
She pointed to her temple. “You made this?”
He gave a single, barely perceptible nod, eye narrowed. He watched with the kind of anticipatory curiosity one might give when seeing a newborn foal find its footing for the first time.
She cleared her throat. “Is that a normal side effect? The overheating?”
“No,” he said simply, then uncrossed his arms and stretched out his mechanical hand. The metal fingers clicked lightly together as they tremored. A small grimace tugged at his lips. “Merely an unforeseen issue with the field upgrade.”
She gulped down a bite. “Field upgrade, sir?”
His lower jaw worked back and forth, lips faintly parting as though he’d been about to speak, but couldn’t decide what to say.
But Adriene didn’t need him to confirm what she already knew. Something had happened to her implant on Cimarosa-IV. She’d seen and felt things she shouldn’t have been able to see and feel.
She cleared her throat. “My Rubicon’s not like the others, is it?”
His contemplative expression loosened, and he let out the smallest breath of a sigh. “No, Sergeant. Not anymore.”
“What changed? And why?”
West stretched out his cybernetic hand again. “The answer to that is … complicated.”
“Try me,” she said, finding strength in her voice for the first time since she’d woken up.
West’s eyebrows lifted. Shifting his weight, he crossed his arms as he regarded her with idle curiosity, though he didn’t respond.
She blew out a long exhale. “You can start by explaining how I could see…” Every circuit in her suit, all of overwatch, the Mechan, the dropship, shit in orbit, the Aurora … “… everything,” she breathed. “Enemy positions, my team—all across the planet. Filtered directly into my mind.”
He nodded. “A result of the aforementioned upgrade.”
“Can you at least give me the patch notes?”
The corner of his mouth twitched. He turned, retreating toward his workstation. Moments later, he brought another stool back with him.
His cybernetic limbs buzzed lightly as he sat in front of her. “I recently developed an … overhauled version of the Rubicon software.”
“Three-point-oh?”
His mouth twitched again in a smile that was not quite a smile. “If you will. The new version featured modified protocols for the Rubicon intelligence.”
Adriene’s brows pinched as she swallowed another bite. “What kind of protocols?”
He stretched his neck side to side a few times before he answered. “Ones the Concord Nations Sentience Act would likely define as artificial ascendance.”
She blinked once. “You mean AI?”
“Correct.”
Adriene stared at him for a few long moments, processing. She didn’t keep up to date on the politics, but she knew there were harsh limits on what was allowed when it came to artificial intelligence. Having dealt with the Mechan for two decades was traumatic enough—they didn’t need their own robot uprising to complicate matters.
Though she didn’t really give a shit whether or not it was legal. She only cared if it was safe.
“So, that’s the version I have now? An AI instead of a VI?”
“Correct.”
“Okay … What’s that mean? What’s the difference?”
West looked up as he scratched his chin, his mouth pinching in contemplation. Adriene recognized the look—that annoying face all eggheads made when they tried to think of a way to dumb something down to explain it to a normal person.
She tore off another chunk of MRE, chewing it slowly as she waited for him to figure it out.
“In its most basic form,” he said finally, “the difference lies in restrictions. The functionality is much the same, but a virtual intelligence is throttled. Its learning capabilities and reactions will always be planned, controlled, and predictable, based entirely on its coding. It cannot deviate.”
Adriene rubbed her aching temple. “And that’s not the case with the AI version?”
“No,” he said, then took a deep breath. “Not only can the AI learn, it can fluidly adapt its own code to accommodate what it believes is correct. Alter its functions and personality at will, essentially.”
“Mine seemed to have quite a personality even before the upgrade.”
“A simulated effect,” he assured. “Part of the VI’s protocols are to endear itself to the user. But every aspect of that personality is adjustable in the user setting. All preordained. It adapts, but does not feel. It learns, but does not evolve.”
She took a quick swig of water. “So my Rubicon is different now … because it can evolve?”
“I believe so, yes.”
Adriene released a breathy scoff. “You believe so? How do you not know?”
He ran a hand over his close-cropped hair. “Unfortunately,” he began, “I have not had the chance to do much in the way of testing. Any trials I’ve managed have been … limited by the confines of simulations. Field deployment was new territory.”
Adriene shifted her weight on the stool. That was not precisely comforting.
“That said,” West continued, “something happened beyond what I expected. Something that didn’t occur in any of the simulations.”
“And what’s that?”
“Breadth,” he said, tone wistful, light.
She raised an eyebrow.
He wet his lips slowly, a fragment of need-to-dumb-down leaking into his expression. “The VI’s most basic functions reside in the implant itself,” he explained. “Then it uses your neural pathways as an … extension, if you will.”
“More processing power?” she offered, recalling what Daroga had mentioned in the hardsuit lecture.
West’s eyebrow perked up. He almost seemed impressed. “Precisely. And that network extends with any connected suit, module, weapon, or armor matrices, giving it additional breadth.”
“But the AI version…?” she prompted.
He exhaled a controlled breath. “Deploying the AI version to your implant had much the same effect, but on an exponential scale. Your mind granted the AI substantial reams of power, allowing you to process many things at once, while also giving it range. This resulted in the experience you mentioned earlier—it acted like a mobile antenna, reaching out and creating dynamic links between sources to establish a massive wireless network for many kilometers.”
And well beyond. She considered telling him the extent of what she’d seen: all the way back to the Rubicon mainframe.
A prickling warning in the back of her skull urged against giving him the specifics. If he didn’t already know that, it might be better that way. At least until she learned more about the major and this “upgrade.”
West shook his head, a hint of wonder creeping into his tone. “The AI gleaned information from the expanded network for its own use, in addition to converting it into sensory stimulus, giving you the ability to process it visually.” West sat back on his stool, crossing his arms. “I had not expected this outcome, honestly. Your unique wiring may have been a factor.”
Adriene frowned. “My unique wiring?”
“Your mind contains…” He scratched his chin. “… complicated neural networking, to say the least. The likes of which I’ve never seen before.”
She clutched the MRE tighter, trying to ignore the fact that he’d somehow seen the neural structure of her brain.
“It’s understandable,” he continued. “Your mind has had to rewire itself dozens of times in an attempt to better handle your constant rezoning procedures. Each death is a shock to the system.”
Adriene concealed a scoff with a fake cough. She tore another chunk from the dry food brick. He’d read up on her service history, it seemed.
“In the end,” West continued, “the system becomes stronger because of it. Like when a muscle grows, but only after being broken down and repairing itself. Because of your previous trauma, your mind accepts the ascendancy in stride, where others would have faltered.”
She rubbed her temple, recalling the sharp, blinding, all-consuming pain she’d felt on Cimarosa-IV. It hadn’t really felt all that “in stride” at the time.
“Okay,” she sighed. “I’m an ideal host, I get it. But why? What triggered it to upgrade?”
“I did.”
The blunt admission came out so casually, it almost passed her notice, and she coughed out a crumb of MRE as she deferred the next question she’d planned to ask. Because that answer required clarification.
“On purpose?” she asked, brow creased deeply.
He inclined his head.
Adriene’s voice pitched up with incredulity. “In the middle of a mission? Sir?”
West scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “Not ideal timing, I agree.”
The MRE wrapper crinkled in her grip as she fidgeted on the stool. “Why? Because I was going to get left behind?”
His gaze flicked down, and he slowly shook his head. “Not exactly.”
Adriene’s lips parted, but she didn’t even need to ask. She already knew the answer.
She’d been trapped. With Mechan incoming. No rifle. No squad. But she’d had eyes on the objective.
The major had risked pushing the upgrade as a last-ditch effort. So she’d have a chance at completing the mission.
West remained silent for a long moment, his ocular implant catching the light as his real eye locked onto her. “I do apologize, Sergeant. Truly. Pushing a live upgrade in the field is not what I would consider an ideal initial beta test.”
