Aura aura jax 1, p.17
Aura (Aura Jax #1), page 17
This can't be real.
She fumbles in her pockets, then strides back across the room and picks something up off the floor.
A lighter.
She flips the top to light it and walks back toward Reece.
He looks at her, then at me, and then around the room, as if wondering when the joke is going to end. It doesn't.
She moves the orange flame closer to his bare arm until the flame touches his flesh. Silently, at least to me, he screams in pain.
Neeve's gone mad.
What are you doing? Neeve!
Stop me.
Her lack of emotion stuns me.
Reece's thoughts scramble and turn, riddled with fear. I need to get him out of my head. I have to focus on Neeve and make her stop.
Breathe.
I go to the chair, close my eyes, and try to clear my head again. Neeve's mind is a glowing mass of heat; red and purple, black and pink. Reece's panic fades into the background, pedestrian compared to her incandescence.
I hear whistling in my ears. My eyes fly open. My physical body feels inadequate to contain the energy building inside of me.
Neeve removes the sling from Reece's arm and rips off a bandage underneath, revealing a messy wound.
I sense her intention. It slices into my consciousness.
She's going to help me succeed, and she doesn't care if she has to hurt Reece in the process.
She squeezes his arm, digging her nails into the wound. Reece has his mouth clenched shut; tears are running down his cheeks. He's struggling against the restraints, but it's no good.
He's trapped.
And she's not going to stop.
I gather up all of my energy and use it like a metaphysical battering ram. I feel the ache behind my eyes and the lightness in my head that I usually feel before I black out, but this time, I am not blacking out.
This time I find a way in.
Her thought pattern is intricate and dense, almost musical.
Enough! I aim the word into her mind.
I feel her flinch, but it doesn't stick.
My head pounds as she resists me. Unlike my connection with the Elite girl that felt like two magnets snapping together, connecting with Neeve is like attempting to get two magnets to touch the same poles, the opposing forces pushing each other away.
A line of sweat trickles down my back.
Suddenly, in my mind's eye, I can see her entire nervous system glowing in a kaleidoscope of color.
I'm connected. Locked in. I'm in the space between the seconds.
Neeve may be a Prophet, but I am an Influencer.
And my mind is a weapon.
I reach toward her with my mind, turning my thoughts into a physical force.
NO!
The thought is a bright red spike of energy, an explosion ripping through me. My body trembles and Neeve's arm swings backward, flesh and bone colliding with solid wall.
Reece's chair tips sideways. Neeve's face twists in agony and Reece's head collides with the floor.
You did it, Neeve says telepathically.
I slump in my chair, winded.
Reece isn't moving.
I haul myself up and bang on the wall. “LET ME OUT!”
Neeve sees me and fumbles for the remote. The screen retracts and I race through to Reece's side.
“What were you thinking?” I say to Neeve. My hands are shaking as I wrestle with Reece's shackles.
“He agreed to help us,” she says, nursing her arm.
“You really think this is what he signed up for?”
“I did what had to be done.”
“You're sick.”
She shrugs. “For the past week, I've had the same vision over and over and over.” She spits bile onto the floor. “Your father dead on the Execution platform. Your mother and Robert Wolfe on a balcony waving at the crowd cheering his death.”
My insides turn to ice.
She dusts herself off. “We were running out of time.” She says, limping towards the door. “There's a first aid kit in the bathroom. I'll go and tell my father what we just did.”
Chapter 35
I help Reece onto my bed and retrieve the first aid kit from the bathroom, still furious with Neeve. How dare she pull something like this?
“My hero,” Reece smiles when I step back into the room.
“I'm sorry. I can't believe she put you through that.”
“Neeve was telling the truth,” he says. “She came to camp and told me about your dad and about what you're trying to do.”
My stomach turns over at the mention of Dad, and Neeve's warning ricochets around my head: ‘Your father dead on the Execution platform. Your mother and Robert Wolfe on a balcony waving at the crowd cheering his death.’
I shudder.
“I wanted to help,” Reece says with a grimace. “I didn't think it would hurt so much.”
“Don't excuse what she did,” I say.
His arm looks even worse up close. It's a mass of angry, mangled flesh. It's an older wound; I see some stitches popping open. “What happened to your arm?” I ask, inspecting it.
“I was bitten.”
“More Teks?” I ask, alarmed.
He shakes his head. “No. We caught a wild boar. I went to get it out of the trap and the thing took a chunk out of my arm.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Don't you make sure it's dead before you get it out of the trap?”
He rolls his eyes. “You sound like Helen.”
I root through the first aid kit for antiseptic wipes, fresh bandages, and ointment, and I find a pot of something called Heal-Me.
“How are you? Really?” he asks as I clean up his wounds.
“I'm fine. Just tired… The training is pretty exhausting. I'm usually in a deep sleep by now.”
I might still be conscious this time, but there are black spots in front of my eyes.
I force a smile, pushing them back. “Tell me about the camp. How is everybody? Are you looking out for Selena?”
“‘Course I am. She's happy. They're all well. The extra food has helped our morale.”
I open the pot of Heal-Me and smear half of the contents onto Reece's wound.
As I'm unwrapping a bandage for him, my sleeve rides up and his eyes fall on the large yellowing bruise on my wrist. “Wait a minute. What happened to your arm?”
“This?” I scramble for an excuse. ‘My mum gave it to me in one of our VR simulations’ sounds all kinds of wrong. “I just… banged it on something or other… I don't remember,” I say. “It looks worse than it feels.”
He nods. I can tell he doesn't quite believe me.
I finish pinning his bandage into place. “Done.”
“Thanks,” he says, shifting down in the bed. Pain flickers across his face.
“You get some rest,” I say. “I need to talk to Neeve's father.”
I don't bother to knock when I get to Edward's study.
I try the handle. The door is unlocked, but the study is empty.
Where are they?
Neeve's makeshift bed is neatly made up on the floor.
There's a laptop open on Edward's desk. I spin it around and hit one of the keys to get rid of the screen saver.
Memory Disks syncing…
There are five dialogue boxes open on screen, each one at a different stage of syncing: Mem 1, Mem 2, Mem 3, Mem 4, Mem 5.
My skin starts crawling.
There are a series of bleeps as the dialogue boxes close, one after another.
>Synchronization complete.
>Found one error.
>File not saved.
A low rumble followed by a scraping sound fills the air, as if the earth itself is moving. I tear my eyes away from the screen, freezing as the back wall in the study starts to slide open. Another door I don't know about.
Neeve squeezes through the gap and goes straight for the laptop without acknowledging me.
As the wall continues to inch open, I glimpse a hidden room on the other side.
I stifle a scream.
I wasn't dreaming after all.
There are five people of varying ages in lab chairs; glassy eyes fixed on me.
One of them is Edward.
Another is the man I saw in the lab.
Chapter 36
I back away, contemplating escape.
I scan the room for anything I can use as a weapon. My eyes land on a metal doorstop. I bend down and grab it off the floor, ready to lash out.
Neeve is tapping away on the laptop.
“What is all of this?” My voice sounds wrong, strangled.
She looks at me as if she's only just noticed I'm there.
“Do me a favor,” she says, going back into the room. “When I tell you, press enter.”
“I'm not doing anything until you tell me what's going on.”
The five lifeless bodies stare back at me from the lab.
“I told him it was a mistake to hide this from you,” she mutters, “but keeping your mind on your training had to be our priority.”
“Hide what from me? What is this?”
She looks at the doorstop in my hand. “Are you planning on caving my head in with that?”
If I have to, I think.
She rolls her eyes and puts her hands up in front of her. “I'll explain, I promise. But please – put that down and help me with my father first.”
I set the doorstop down and watch Neeve go back into the hidden room.
“Now, Aura,” she says.
I press the key on the laptop, and ‘Mem 3' starts to sync again.
“I am sorry about Reece,” she says from the other room. “He's going to be fine.”
I've forgotten how angry I am at her over that. Suddenly it seems insignificant.
10%, 20%, 30%... At 100% the laptop bleeps and the dialogue box closes.
>Synchronization complete.
“It's done,” I tell her.
She nods. “Come on in.”
I hesitate.
“There's nothing to be afraid of.”
I could still get out of here. But then what?
The room is cold, stark, and clinical like the White Room. It smells like a funeral parlor.
In the corner, there's a small desk with a computer and a stack of papers on it. An operating table stands in the center of the room, and next to that is a wheeled metal cart piled with various medical implements – I see scalpels, a thermometer, and a stethoscope.
Along the wall opposite the doorway, there are five bodies seated on five chairs. In the harsh light, the bodies look like waxworks.
Neeve is hovering around Edward's body. I watch with sick fascination as she pulls a thin silver cable from the back of his head.
“Who are these people?” I ask her. “What are they?”
I jump as Edward's eyes flutter open.
He blinks and I feel a chill run down my spine at the sudden animation of his lifeless body.
“Neeve, Aura...” He looks slightly dazed.
“Aura made it through Level 3,” Neeve says. “It's time to tell her about the Vessels.”
Chapter 37
Neeve leaves Edward and me alone to talk.
“So you did it,” he says. “Your mother's memory disk helped?”
I let out a snort. “Stop acting as if this is all normal!” I say, waving a hand around the room. “Second, did you know what Neeve was planning to do to Reece? Did you sign off on that?”
He opens his mouth as if he's going to say something, and then closes it again. He clears his throat. “We would never have done it if Reece himself had not agreed,” he says eventually, his voice low. “I'm sorry your friend was hurt. But he's going to be fine.”
I'm so furious my whole body is trembling. I want to smash something.
“You keep telling me to trust you,” I say. “But after Reece, and this – ” I gesture to the bodies “– how can I?”
“Neeve went too far,” he says, “but her intentions were good.”
Your father dead on the Execution platform…
“As for the Vessels, I didn't know how, or when, to tell you. We couldn't risk your running out on us.”
“Well why don't you try me now?” I snap back, not ready to forgive him. I can't wait to hear how he's going to explain a bunch of inanimate bodies in his spare room.
I might run out anyway.
He looks down at his hands. “While I was at Edcal, before the DN8 trials, I became interested in the connection between the body as a vessel and the actual person inhabiting the body,” he says.
I shake my head. “Get to the point, Edward.”
He looks up at me. “I began exploring a theory that with the right technology, the human mind could be mapped, uploaded, and preserved in hardware.”
Preserved in hardware?
“The Vessels in this room are the most advanced form of Artificial Intelligence in the world,” he continues. “Calvin and I brought them here from The Telepathe years ago, before my arrest. They're basically organic. They can eat, drink, sleep, wash, and expel waste, just like a human body.”
He pauses. “Months of research and experimentation with them confirmed my original theory. I learned how to duplicate my memory disk and upload it to a new host.”
“What?” I scramble to make sense of what I'm hearing.
My mind flashes to the animated body of the man I saw in the lab; the five memory disks that were syncing in the next room…
My anger dissipates, giving way to slow shock.
“You're saying that you can upload your memory disk to these AI's?”
He nods. “The results of my experimentation raised too many security issues for The Society. Calvin said he wanted to shut the whole thing down, but after my arrest, he repurposed my research to keep prisoners under control during experimentation.
“After Neeve and I were exiled here with nothing else to do, I continued with my research. I discovered that I could create endless copies and iterations of the self.”
My mouth hangs open. “You're talking about cloning consciousness.”
The man in the lab was Edward all along.
“You made me think I was going mad,” I say.
“I'm sorry,” he says. “You… caught me unawares.”
I reach out and touch the bare arm of one of the Vessels. The skin is cool but completely lifelike, with tiny goosebumps, moles, and fine hairs. The eyes are brown, blue, and hazel. Not violet like any of the AI's that I've seen.
Edward pushes himself up out of his chair and walks over to a sink in the corner of the room.
“Water?”
I shake my head.
He fills a glass for himself.
“At the moment, The Society uses a person's memory disk to prove their guilt or innocence,” he says, “but these disks could be so much more. I believe that the future of our species may involve a desertion of our biological bodies. Our memory disks could be a way for us to transcend the limitations of our flesh, eliminating the threat of sickness, disease… perhaps even mortality.”
He takes a sip of his water. “But I haven't got that far yet.”
“You're talking about living forever?” I ask in disbelief.
He smiles. “Only if I can get out of this bunker.”
I look around the room and shiver involuntarily.
“How does it feel?” I ask him. “Being in another body?”
“Not as strange as you might expect,” he says. “The physical body is just a cocktail of elements: 65% oxygen, some carbon, hydrogen, a little calcium, sulfur, chlorine... It is our minds that make us who we are. I have simply found a way to upload mine to different pieces of hardware.”
“And the body you're in now… Is that AI too?”
He pauses. “No.” His eyes darken. “This body belonged to a Worker from the Old City, someone that nobody would miss.”
Oh.
My skin crawls as the final pieces fall into place.
Why Edward and Neeve's versions of their escape are slightly different, why Edward doesn't look at all like his younger photographs.
Calvin Aldrich didn't exchange bullets for tranquilizer darts and carry an unconscious body into an underground bunker.
That really would have been impossible.
“Calvin used your research to put your memory disk into someone else's actual body to get you out of The Society.”
Edward nods. “It was an inexpensive alternative to a state of the art AI model, I suppose,” he says. “But Calvin used my early research as a blueprint.”
Now it makes sense.
All of this – the Vessels, the transfer of memory disks, Edward's confidence that I can get into The Telepathe unseen…
“This is how you plan to get me back into The Society, isn't it?”
Chapter 38
Transferring my mind into another body – the idea is terrifying.
What if something goes wrong? What if the disk fails to write, or only half of my thought imprint transfers across, and I get stuck in some kind of weird limbo?
I guess I don't care if my body is destroyed beyond recognition, but my mind is me. I'm not sure I want to risk losing that.
My gaze meets the glassy-eyed stare of one of Edward's Vessels.
I have to get out of this room.
“I need to think about this,” I say, pushing past Edward into the study. I rest my hands on the desk and try to think rationally about what he's proposing.
I take a deep breath. Exhale.
He limps into the room after me.
“If we do this – put my mind into one of these… Vessels – what happens to my body?” I ask.
He sits down at the desk, facing me, moving the laptop to one side. “It will simply be unconscious. Preserved here as if it's in a deep sleep.”
“Could this kill me?” I look up and stare into the whites of his eyes.
“No.” He rubs the back of his neck. “I'm not going to pretend that the procedure isn't without risk, but I've done this many times, and I won't let any harm come to you.”
