Virch code, p.1
Virch Code, page 1
VIRCH CODE
E. M. RENSING
Copyright © 2024 by E.M. Rensing
Print ISBN: 979-8-9869182-7-3
Cover Design by Oli Price at www.bonobobookcovers.com
Editing by Kenneth Zink and Lisa Henson
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Generative AI was not utilized for any component of this book; narrative development, drafting, editing, formatting and cover artwork were all accomplished by humans. With help from mulled cider, argumentative cats, and ambient cyberpunk sound mixes.
THE ABIOTA SERIES
Source Code
Unity Code
Numina Code
Domain Code
Virch Code
Anyon Code
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Author’s Notes
About the Author
1
“I keep telling you, Daelia, they are wrong about you. Why do you listen to them?”
“I don’t know. Because you won’t move me to a different school?”
“You are in the best school in the entire area. It would be foolish to move you out.”
“I don’t care, Mom. Put me in public school, who gives a shit?”
“An urban public school? Where they have police officers because the children will not behave? I do not see how that would be an improvement for you.”
“It could be,” she grumbled, “if nobody there knew who my parents are.”
They were driving. Mom was driving, driving a little too fast and in her kugu, nonetheless. Daelia had been studying control systems on those things over the past few months, and everything she learned just made her more nervous to be in the car like this.
Sure, Dad and Mom had showed her Mom’s control interface, and yes, Mom was sapient-class and a vehicle herself and knew exactly what she was doing, but she was still operating the car by operating a kugu. Two layers of control mechanisms, where a problem with either could be fatal.
Maybe it was just her anxiety. Anxiety from school. There was so much of it to go around these days.
“I cannot keep picking you up after fights, Daelia,” Mom said. “You have to stop getting into altercations with your classmates.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Not hit them.”
“Yeah, well, maybe they should keep their mouths shut,” she muttered, and laid her head against the window. “They all hate me.”
“They don’t hate you.”
“Yeah, they do. They call me a weirdo, say I’m not human.”
“You are my daughter, Daelia,” Mom said.
“Yeah, thanks for that,” Daelia grumbled. “All my bits are meat, and I don’t even get any of the advantages of being abiota.”
“Like what?”
“Like not giving a shit what other people think of me,” Daelia grumbled.
“We do not have natural society, the way humans do, it is true, but we all live in the human world. We do…care, about how people see us. And you are human. You have to learn to get along with the people around you.”
Daelia thumbed the cut on her lip. The bruises were just beginning to show. It hadn’t been one of the other girls making fun of her today, oh no. They never hit her. They just laughed at her and found ways to embarrass her publicly and shoved mean notes into her locker, shit like this.
This had been one of the boys.
She hadn’t meant to hit him. Most of the time, she took the abuse and walked away. Today, however, the guy had called Dad an abiosexual pervert and wanted to know what kind of fuck-harness he had for Daelia’s mom to use.
Disgusting shit. That wasn’t how it was between her parents. Never had been.
But the comment had hit on one of Daelia’s greatest fears, one that had been growing like a cancer in the dark corners of her mind. That Dad and Mom had only had her, that she only existed, as some kind of excuse. A justification. A totem. Proof that Mom was just like everyone else.
Things had made sense when she was little. Probably because she didn’t know any better. Now, though, Daelia didn’t know what she was supposed to be.
“This isn’t my fault, Mom.”
“I know,” Mom said. There was sadness in her voice. “I know you find this situation intolerable.”
“You don’t get it,” Daelia grumbled. “You were never a teenager.”
One of Mom’s hands left the steering wheel and landed on Daelia’s. She squeezed tight. The kugu was an exceptional piece of engineering. Synthetic skin that was heated to human-normal. It felt almost real. Or rather, it felt alive.
“I’ve dealt with my fair share of suspicion and doubt over the years,” Mom said. “Those first few years were tough for our kind. But we found our way. I found my way. Your father helped me. You have to trust him, Daelia. He’ll help you too.”
“Dad’s gonna yell at me,” she muttered. The cut on her lip was driving her crazy. “I shouldn’t have hit that guy.”
“Indeed not,” Mom said, and looked at her, smiled at her. “Your father taught you how to throw a punch too—”
Pain.
Pain. Electrical fire, arcing. Screaming that was only in her head. A body, Argo’s body, still on the ground. Blood, blood on the ground, the stench of cordite and piss and something clamped around her neck and—
Daelia jerked awake, consciousness recoiling from the echoing dream. She was lying on her back on…on a bed, it seemed, a foam pad that smelled of long neglect, like old clothes pulled from the back of the closet.
It did nothing to help her with her sense of dislocation.
“It was just a dream,” she muttered to herself.
Just a memory. But not just any memory. It was her last memory. From before the crash.
Nothing after that moment was clear, not for weeks and weeks. Daelia knew the story well enough to tell it.
Mom, her attention focused on Daelia, had crashed the car. Then, with her kugu half-destroyed, pulled Daelia from the wreckage.
But this place… Where was she?
Daelia sat up, the weight of her left arm dead on the mattress beside her. The bulk of her brace was still wrapped around it. Inoperable. Broken. She had shattered the control board. Trying to stop Serket. Last night.
Was it only last night?
Where the hell was she?
Holding her left arm to her chest with her right hand, Daelia eased off the bed. She was still dressed at least, the panoply suit itchy with sweat. Even her shoes and panoply spats were still neatly in place.
Her monocle, however, was nowhere to be seen.
At first, she thought she was in a bedroom. A small space, cast in shadows from the light coming in through the floor-to-ceiling window that was just—
Those were city lights. But not very many.
Still fighting the mental fog, Daelia padded over to the window. Took in that tiny patch of light. It was maybe a few blocks’ worth of illumination, some distance below her. Streetlights, building signs. No spotlight-soaked parking lots. None of the red and white glow that belied the movement of cars.
A city. No cars.
Daelia looked around then, really taking in the room. It was small, as small as her student apartment had been back at Ware. Maybe three hundred square feet. Unlike those apartments at Ware, though, this was clearly designed to feel—for lack of a better word—futuristic, done up in some weird sci-fi style. Unnecessary angular detail. Concrete floor. Integrated furniture. Little cubbies boasting clever storage.
And waterfall film.
Waterfall film applied to every flat vertical surface. Like it was wallpaper.
Daelia looked around for a light switch. There was none. Just a palm-sized display screen by the room’s door. Smart controls for the room.
That unsettled feeling grew.
Daelia went back over to the window, looking more carefully. That street. Those lights. No cars. And to the left, north maybe, judging by the way the horizon in front of her was starting to glow a predawn pink, there was something she did recognize.
&n bsp; A ruined dome atop a ruined building, looking for all the world like some giant monster had come along and taken a bite out of it. The sections that remained all seemed quite precarious, like they would lose their battle with gravity at any moment and crash to the ground, hundreds of feet below.
They wouldn’t. Of course they wouldn’t.
It was stabilized. The whole structure was stabilized, the mortal wound done to the structure never quite repaired but never quite able to claim its victim.
Daelia’s good palm went clammy.
She knew where she was.
2
“I don’t like this.”
“You don’t have to like it. But do you want to walk into an emergency room with that kind of injury right now? Fucking terrible idea.”
Argo didn’t answer, unwilling to concede. Lee had a point. But then, Lee didn’t have to walk back into the unit tomorrow morning for shift.
He didn’t think Rover was the kind of guy to ignore a bullet wound in one of his pilots.
He wondered what Daelia was going to think of it. She probably wouldn’t care. She didn’t seem like the type who would.
Where was she?
“How bad is it?” he asked the guy who was dabbing his ear with something. Shit, it stung. The man had introduced himself as Steve Jimenez, and Lee had said he was qualified to be doing this, but who the hell knew?
“You’re extremely fortunate this bullet wasn’t half an inch this way,” the man replied, and tapped a gloved finger against Argo’s face, below the wound that the stray bullet had ripped through the skin of his cheek. “Would have shattered your cheekbone. Another half inch in beyond that, and you’d be in the morgue. Losing half your ear is a small price to pay.”
Argo hadn’t gotten much of a look at the wound. After Lee had scraped him off the floor of the lecture hall, checking on it hadn’t exactly been Argo’s first priority. The older man had clamped a handful of rough paper towels down over the wound. Told Argo to keep pressure on it. Told Argo that they were getting the hell out of town.
They hadn’t stopped moving until they got here. At least, that’s what Argo remembered. His brain wasn’t holding on to anything right now. There were holes in his short-term memories. Like how they’d gotten out of the building.
Like where Daelia was.
Why wasn’t she with them?
Lee had explained something about that earlier. Argo couldn’t remember what it was.
“I appreciate you letting us come over, Steve,” Lee said now. “Even if it is your garage.”
It was a garage. Not one used for cars, from what Argo could tell. There was an old-school TV set in the back corner, a set of dark leather couches, a gleaming red wall-mounted tool rack that looked like it had never known the touch of grease. A massive gun safe stood in one corner, concealed beneath a wooden cabinet facade. The epoxy floor looked brand new.
The guy grunted. “My garage is fucking spotless,” he said.
“There are definitely oil stains in here, Steve.”
The man abandoned his examinations of Argo’s face, eyes lifting above the line of his reading glasses to fall on Lee instead. “I told you to take it easy, Hall. And now here you are with more injuries.”
Lee grunted and waved a hand. The back of his arm had bloody trails cut across it. “Superficial injuries.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” Jimenez replied. “After I’m done with this guy. What did you say you’d gotten into again?”
“I didn’t,” Lee said, and indicated his portable jamming unit, next to him on the couch. “Best to not get into it.”
“Well, I think I can take a guess,” Jimenez said, still examining Argo’s ear. He had a scalpel out now. Argo didn’t like the look of that. “More Unity shenanigans?”
“What do you mean?” Lee asked.
“I’ve been hearing a lot of interesting rumors from friends,” Jimenez said. “There’s been a lot of activity out in West Texas, out past the fields, getting worse every day now. And there was San Antonio, of course, that shit with the Alamo.”
“You heard about that?” Argo asked, forcing himself to hold still.
“I have a friend who was there. He told me what he saw. Kugus taking people, kugus killing people… Whatever Unity wants, it ain’t in our favor, I can tell you that much.” Jimenez nodded at Lee. “And if you want to talk anything abiotic, Argo, this guy knows it all.”
“I wasn’t there, Steve,” Lee said, testy. “Remember?”
“Yeah, yeah. If you weren’t there it was because they wanted you to not be there.” He turned his attention back to Argo. “Lee'll deny it, but he knows a hell of a lot more than he tells any of us. Unity’s abiotic, last time I checked.”
Argo coughed and changed the subject. “So? What’s my diagnosis?”
“You’ll live,” Jimenez said, giving him a smile. “I need to sew your cheek up. I’ll cauterize and pack your ear, but beyond that, there’s not much I can do. Even if I had the chunk that the bullet took off, I probably wouldn’t be able to reattach it. Don’t worry. I’ll do my best to keep scarring to a minimum, but—”
Argo didn’t care about scarring. It was the least important thing on his mind right now. “Doc, uh…”
“Steve,” the man corrected. “I was a combat medic. Enlisted, remember? Don’t put that doctor shit on me.”
“Was?” Argo was pretty sure they’d gone over all this when they’d showed up at this guy’s house a little while ago, but he couldn’t remember.
Just like how he couldn’t remember where Daelia was.
“I handle specialized medical consultations for a few of the energy companies in town,” Jimenez said.
“What does that even mean?” Argo asked.
“Means anything they want. Medical care is pretty shit in most of the places they operate, especially if they’re doing exploration or working on a new field. I make sure nobody on the team dies,” the medic said, and his gloved fingers pressed right below the groove in Argo’s cheek again, unleashing a fresh wave of pain so intense Argo almost retched. Steve didn’t seem to notice. “Okay, I’m going to go get my special needles for this one. You boys okay for a minute?”
Lee waved him off.
Argo waited until the doctor, medic, whoever, was gone. Then he leaned forward in his chair. “How do you know this guy, Lee? Afghanistan?”
Lee shrugged. “Fuck, no. He’s in my shooting club.”
“Did you come to see him? After…” And Argo waved a hand at Lee. “After whatever happened to you happened?”
“Like I told you before, I was being held,” Lee said.
“What?” Argo asked, confused. “Where were you? Maybe they took Daelia there, and…”
“Argo, we had this conversation in the car,” Lee said, and then sighed. “Steve thinks you may have a mild concussion. Do you remember him telling you that?”
“Sort of,” Argo lied.
“It’s pretty normal. Should clear up soon,” Lee said, and sighed. “Daelia is most likely with Ginger. Neither one of them was in the building when I found you.”
Had they talked about this? “Daelia wouldn’t have left me. She was…”
“She was still struggling with Serket. That’s what you said last time,” Lee said. Argo looked at him.
“Daelia’s a smart girl. There was no way she could have moved you and she wouldn’t have known Dingo and me were in the building. She took Ginger and she left, just like she was supposed to. This is why Steve’s house was our rendezvous point, so we’d have somewhere safe to get patched up if shit got really crazy.”
“So where is she?”
