Relics: Three (Relics Singularity Series Book 3), page 2
They jumped another crack, this one even wider, and Ary turned left and started uphill. She slowed, her chest rising and falling deeply as she caught her breath. Ravi was glad for the slower pace, but he still had no idea where they were going.
“You want to fill me in on where we’re headed? This mountain range doesn’t stretch all the way to Paris, so I’m assuming you’ve got another plan.”
“Yeah,” she said, still pumping her legs and climbing upward. “The plan is ‘get away from those guys.’”
“And we did. They’re back there — probably still looking for us at the top of that ridge.”
“Not a chance,” she said. “You ever had an ARU after you?”
Ravi smiled. “You have?”
“They may not be the most intelligent or talented people, but they have the most talented and intelligent boss. The System is behind their every move, giving them constant updates using any satellites that might be pointed down at us to tell them where we are.”
Ravi hadn’t considered this, but he knew it to be true as soon as she said it. There was an old joke about how ARUs were formed. The reason the people who became part of an ARU were accepted by the System was due to a perfect score in three areas: perfectly average intelligence, perfectly average strength, perfectly average confidence. The men and women who made the best Advanced Remote Units were just intelligent enough to follow orders blindly, without questioning anything.
They reached the top of the small hill they had been climbing, coming face-to-face with a cliff that rose straight up for about a hundred feet, then sloped away again and continued ascending until it met the level of the ridge they had been climbing toward earlier.
“Now what?” Ravi asked. “I didn’t bring any climbing gear.”
“Won’t need it,” Ary said. “There’s an opening over here to the left. It’s narrow, but wide enough for us to squeeze through. It basically cuts through the cliff and will take us up to the top of the ridge.”
Within a few minutes they found exactly what she had described, and she veered to the right and led them up through a narrow crevice in the cliff. There was still some minor bouldering to do, but nothing too intense for Ravi. It took another forty minutes to ascend what would have taken them twenty earlier, but the benefit of not being shot at the entire time was certainly worth the extra effort.
The crevice opened up at the top of the ridge and Ary turned to the right. “Let’s move down this way, farther away from them. It’s a hike, but this ridge actually winds around and then back down, dropping us almost into the ocean.”
“And then we swim to Paris?”
She didn’t answer, and Ravi looked up to see why. He had been staring at his feet, an amateurish mistake, and he immediately regretted the bad habit.
Three men with rifles pointed directly at them were standing a few feet away. Ravi saw the angles and knew right away where they had been hiding. The System, just as Ary had predicted, had given these men orders to move over the ridge quickly and get in front of them. Where the others were located, Ravi could only imagine.
“Turn around,” the man in the middle said. “Begin walking, do not stop until I say. Do not turn around and look back.”
“What do you want from us?”
The man stepped forward and pressed the muzzle of his gun into Ary’s chest.
“Okay, okay,” she said. “Don’t have to be a baby about it.”
Ravi flashed her a glance that said, Careful. We don’t need any more trouble than we already have. Her smirk told him that the message had been lost upon her.
They did as they were told, walking along the ridge and slightly uphill toward where they had seen the unit earlier. They didn’t see any other members of the ARU along the way, and Ravi wondered if the three who had found them had simply been in the right place at the right time on accident.
“Psst,” he heard Ary whisper. He shot his eyes toward her, keeping his face riveted straight ahead. He had been listening to the sound of the men’s boots crunching over the gravel, trying to gauge how far behind them they were. By his estimate, at this moment they were farther behind than they had been for the past few minutes. Ary must have known this as well.
Hopefully they are far enough behind they can’t hear us, Ravi thought.
“Time to make our move,” Ary said, her voice still low enough to be nearly inaudible to Ravi. “Keep your eyes on the ground, see if you can find anything to use as a weapon. We’ll take out the guy directly behind me first, and I’ll grab his gun. You’ll need to keep the other two off of me long enough to —“
“Hey!” the man said. “Keep it down. Don’t make me put a few rounds into your —“
“Now!” Ary yelled.
Ravi had been impatiently awaiting the remainder of her orders, but it seemed as though she wanted him to figure it out for himself. She was already in motion, ducking and rolling sideways and coming up with two fist-sized rocks. The first, in her right hand, she threw as hard as possible at the man standing directly behind her — the one on the left now that she was facing them.
The rock tumbled through the air, and Ravi was mesmerized by its flight. He could not take his eyes off of it, even after it crushed the man’s head and bounced forward a bit, then finally down to the ground once again. The man hit the ground a second later, still gripping his gun with both hands.
Finally, Ravi woke himself up and dove backwards, ending up on the ground behind a boulder that was perfectly shaped to hide his prone body. It happened to be perfect timing as well: the other two men fired their weapons, one of them aiming directly at where Ravi stood a moment earlier, the other at Ary.
He didn’t have time to see if Ary had been hit. Feeling the natural surge of energy that meant his body was now fully aware of what was happening, Ravi reached around and found an old tree branch, nearly petrified. It was hardened and solid, with just enough weight to do some damage. He waited for a burst of bullets to ping off of the side of the rock and lunged forward, pulling his legs out underneath him as he dove into a run.
He held the stick up high, one hand holding the middle of the object for control while the other provided leverage at the bottom for power. He pushed forward, aiming at the man on the right. Both of the men still standing were focused on Ary, who had disappeared from the scene. Ravi brought the stick down as swiftly as he could, aiming for the man’s head. The man saw him just as the stick connected with his ear.
…And the stick exploded into dust. Apparently the stick was not petrified at all, and Ravi had just grabbed a branch that had dried for years in the sun. It was brittle, strong enough to be held and swung, but far too weak to do any damage.
The man shook his head, the dust particles from the pulverized stick flying outwards, and brought his gun up and aimed it toward Ravi.
Ravi’s eyes widened, realizing that he had abandoned his hiding spot and was now standing in the middle of an open circle of grass; there was literally nothing to hide behind. His eyes darted back and forth trying to find Ary, but she was still strangely absent.
The man smiled, pulling his gun up to his eye to make sure his shot would count. The other remaining soldier, the leader of the three men, walked uphill away from his comrade to try to find Ary.
Ravi felt his eyes squeeze shut in time with the man’s finger, squeezing the trigger of his rifle.
He waited, then heard the crack of the rifle.
PETER
“SIR, WE’RE COMING UP ON the edge of the range,” the woman, Ailis, said from the cockpit of the Tracer. Her dreadlocks hung down far below her neckline, the small objects and souvenirs tied into them almost completely covered by unwashed hair.
To Peter Grouse, the dreadlocks were the only thing about the young woman he didn’t like. Her pale, freckled skin was nearly as striking as her petite beauty, and Grouse often thought about what it might like…
No. He willed himself away from the vile truth of lust, opting instead for reality. He knew there was no other woman in his life, not after her, and he knew that even a night-long escapade with Ailis wouldn’t quell the bubbling of regret that constantly boiled inside him. It surprised him, too, that his late wife was the one he thought about the most. His young children, his pride and joy, were distant memories by now, but she — she was alive, inside him. She was the thing he would always fight for and never win, and she was the one who drove him mad trying to do it.
Ailis started repeating the statement, but Grouse held up an open palm. “Thank you, Ailis. Continue over, and speed up when we reach altitude.”
She clenched her jaw and nodded once. Next to her, Raven, Grouse’s chosen second-in-command and the only friend he had remaining, looked back at him.
“You sure about this, Peter?”
Grouse bristled at the use of his first name, then remembered they were alone in the Tracer. No Unders, no family, no soldiers here. Just the three of them.
He knew what the man was asking, too. Are you okay with leaving them all behind to die? Without Grouse and the others, the Unders that made it through the battle with the Relics and the ARUs would be nothing but a few groups of nomads once again. If they survived, they would try to regroup and organize once more, but Grouse knew it wasn’t in their nature to want to organize. They were meant to be small packs of wandering outlaws, living off the land and working where they could for what they could.
It was their shared dream, actually. A throwback to a day when men roamed free, falling into whatever line of work suited them at that time, and surviving for the sake of experiencing it. The Unders had come to expect this sort of freedom, and the oppression of even an amicable dictator represented everything they had fought against.
But when Grouse came along, he had offered them more than just a simple, aimless life. He offered them hope, and a means to achieve their ultimate goal — to overthrow the System and create a world where everyone was an ‘Under.’ They would no longer require the moniker, either, as they wouldn’t be living ‘underground’ in any sense of the word. They would be on equal footing as every other man, woman, and child in the world, and only the strong would survive.
The Under mindset permeated deep, and into this well of belief that Grouse tapped for his campaign. He had worked slowly, methodically, building up small groups of Unders who bought into his pitch, then eventually combined them into larger battalions of fighters and supporters who lived and worked together.
It helped that Grouse allowed them to celebrate small victories like bringing in an ARU and commandeering their equipment, weapons, and vehicles, and allowing the group to keep the loot. He had organized a system of trade between each of the groups, allowing it all to operate like an efficient army — soldiers who fought side-by-side for one another, living and dying as a small team, who also believed in the larger common goal.
“Grouse?”
He nodded. “Yes, sorry. No decision is made lightly these days.”
Raven smiled. “Has there ever been a time when it was easy?”
Ailis pulled back on the Tracer’s stick and the craft aimed upward, focusing on the tip of one of the mountains they were heading into. “We’re keeping it tight to the ground, since there’s supposed to be an ARU camp around here somewhere.”
“Won’t they be at the fight?” Raven asked.
“Who knows?” she replied. “They’re all strung out and braindead anyway. Probably just wandering aimlessly.”
“Still, we don’t want any lucky potshots bringing us down,” Grouse said. “Keep it tight, and get us through the range and out over water before we really start to climb.”
She nodded, focused on the sparse controls in front of her.
“Raven,” Grouse said.
The large black man immediately rose and walked over to Grouse, and sat across from him. Tattoos twirled around his arms and over his face, never converging. The lines seemed independent from one another yet parallel, each unique as it splashed a certain portion of the skin it was covering in a dark blue color.
“We won’t be the only ones in Paris.”
Raven nodded. “I understand. There will be others, including Myers.”
“Perhaps. Crane still has him, and I fully expect Paris to be their destination as well, but then Josiah Crane was always a bit unpredictable.”
“How does our plan need to change in that case?” Raven asked.
“The plan is still the same, but now it is of the utmost importance that we get there in time. There are only three of us, and there is sure to be a large contingent of ARUs guarding the facility. If we run into trouble, we will be outnumbered and outgunned quickly, and we can’t allow Crane and his team to get ahead of us.”
“Why is the System consolidated at the ICPL? Isn’t it vulnerable to an attack by hosting itself in one place?”
Grouse shook his head. “There are downsides to distribution as well, namely a loss in speed and efficiency. At that level, there are only three, possibly four, alternate locations with the computing capacity to maintain even a distributed portion of the System. By consolidating its resources under one roof, the System can insure its own survival more easily.”
“Then how will we take it down? It must know it is vulnerable to attack at the laboratory?”
Ailis turned around and looked at the two men in the back of the Tracer. “It’s been tried before, numerous times.”
Raven’s eyebrows rose. “And I’m assuming these attacks failed?”
“‘Failed’ isn’t even close to a word that describes it. Back when I was still in private security, there were rogue hacker groups trying to penetrate the System’s outer layers of security. Inevitably, one of them would get through and reach the next layer in. Everyone would follow suit, and pretty soon the outermost layer of defenses would be breached.”
“So people were able to get in.”
“Not necessarily,” Ailis explained. The System was playing with them, testing its own defense mechanisms. Some would even say it was allowing them to get in past the first layer, just to see where it was most vulnerable. A little bit of time would pass — usually no more than a few minutes, but in computing time, that is eons — and all of the hackers would go off the Grid simultaneously.”
“Wait a minute. Go off the Grid?”
“Yeah, it was wild. I’ve seen it happen twice in person. The group I was with was watching from the sidelines, logged in as a casual observer. The breach would be made, all the hackers would follow suit, then every single one of them would just disappear. They would drop off the Current system, be wiped from the Grid’s database, and all trace of their handles would be gone.
“Craziest of all, the people would be gone as well. Some say they got scraped, others say the System would just turn them into Hunters or throw them into a deactivated city. But I’ve never seen any hacker come back from an attack against the System.”
Grouse knew all of this; he had spoken to her about it and heard her stories long before they had embarked on this mission. But to Raven, the information was new. And by the look on his face, it was also terrifying.
“Then you want to tell me how in the world we are going to get past it this time?” Raven asked.
Grouse smiled calmly, looking back at his friend and second in command. “The System is smart, even smarter than humans. Probably even smarter than humans collectively. But what people forget to realize is that the System is not a person. It’s a bunch of ones and zeros, all traveling through wires and cyberspace in the form of electronic signals. In a way, it’s similar to the human brain, but it is not.
“The System is a virtual being, one that exists only in the racks of computer stations it is installed onto. But it has to take up physical space. It has to be installed somewhere, and that somewhere happens to be a place we can access.”
Ailis jumped in. “Not without a lot of work, probably some fighting, and certainly a little bit of luck, but we can definitely access it. At its core, the System will be running on some amount of parallel mainframes, either in tandem or as redundant backups. Possibly some combination of both. All of these will, at some point, require human intervention to keep them running and working smoothly. It’s similar to the Current markets; the System requires humans to sit there and press buttons for it to operate. There is never a shortage of humans who want to play monkey, so the System can operate our markets perfectly efficiently for as long as human life exists.”
“So we are going to just walk into the ICPL and hope that we can find these mainframes? And won’t there be intense security on the ground? And this has to have been tried before.” Raven was rubbing the sides of his head, like he was trying to massage out a headache that was forming.
“Relax, friend,” Grouse said. “This has all been thought through and planned for. The System is better than any human ever will be at predicting the ways in which it can and will be attacked. It is a computer system that was, in part, designed to ensure its own survival. There is nothing we can throw at it that will be able to overpower it or trick it. It will always have a contingency, it will always have a plan to prevent that.
“But the one thing, the one variable, that the System can never fully control is humans. It has tried, and gotten quite good at, predicting the behaviors of humanity at large. But where any computer system fails is in its placement of what are called ‘statistical errors.’ It knows they are there, and it can even plot the average of them on a graph, but it has no way of knowing exactly where these statistical errors will fall in reality.”
“Okay, I think I follow,” Raven said. “It can plan for all of the ways it might be attacked, plotting all of them on a graph, and it has a general idea of how unpredictable — as a whole — we are, and it can even chart this number, represented by what you are calling a ‘statistical error,’ on the chart as well.”
“Exactly,” Ailis said. “But the problem with this assumption is that the System can only ever know how many of these statistical errors it can expect for a particular situation, but it can’t know exactly what these errors look like.”
