Aura aura jax 1, p.27
Aura (Aura Jax #1), page 27
Which means that in less than an hour I'll be back, safe, in my own body.
I'll be able to rest.
“Okay,” I say again.
“All we need to do now is initiate the transfer of your memory disk to overwrite the drone,” he says. “This isn't going to be pleasant, Aura.”
There's a splintering sound as the door to the basement entrance breaks open.
“Let's just get on with it.”
Multiple pairs of boots tromp down the stairs.
“It's important that you don't move your head during the transfer process,” he says. “There's a control panel on the arm of the chair you're sitting on. If you press the red button, you'll be harnessed into position. You'll be given a 30-second countdown before the transfer will begin. There's Ice in one of the drawers –”
I frown. “Ice?” Why would I want to take Ice?
“It affects the brain, not the consciousness,” Edward explains. “Once the transfer is complete, you won't feel any ill effects from the Ice,” he assures me, “but it will make the process more comfortable for you.”
I stare at the red button, trying to imagine what it's going to be like, being trapped in a drone. “What if this doesn't work?”
There's only the slightest of pauses. “It will work,” he says.
Next door, the noise is building as CSO's tear through the junk in their search of the main basement room. Only a few inches of wall separates me from the Cogs now.
With trembling hands, I root through the drawers for the half-full bottle of pills. I swallow one down.
I run my fingers over the control panel.
“You'll be here in less than twenty minutes,” Edward says.
Before I can talk myself out of it, I press the red button. Straps shoot out from the back of the chair, around my neck and my torso, pinning my body into the chair.
On the screen, a window appears with a 30-second countdown.
“I'll see you soon, Edward,” I say, closing my eyes.
“You will… Godspeed.”
Chapter 61
My vision is razor-sharp. I can see every speck of dust, every cobweb, in ultra-high resolution.
My hearing has been supercharged too. Everything is amplified, coming in crystal clear.
In front of me, Alex Harper's empty body is strapped to the chair in front of the desk. If the Cogs get in here and find him, they'll think he's dead.
The drone moves reflexively before I'm aware that I want it to, kind of like when you move your arm to scratch an itch without thinking about it, the nerves working a step ahead of the consciousness.
I hear a swarm of bumblebees and realize the sound is me, hovering as the drone above the desk.
I bank down toward the floor, but I'm not prepared for my own speed.
This thing is fast.
It's not a smooth landing. My legs jar on contact. Once I'm steady, I focus on the gap in the wall up ahead, give myself a little more height, and hurtle toward it.
I don't judge the space quite right and there's some resistance as my propellers scrape the sides of the wall, but then I'm through, hovering above the paving stones at the side of Edward's house.
There is no physical sensation. No cool air on my skin, no nausea – just me, my thoughts, and the sound of the drone.
I fly straight up, whizzing past the tops of the houses, above the streetlights, into the clouds. Beneath me, I notice other drones in the sky.
I want to see the city like I did from the top of The Telepathe yesterday, but with only 22 minutes of flying time and a 12-minute journey to my destination, there's not a lot of room for detours.
It's still pretty dark up here, but the city below is illuminated with a million lights.
I leave the Inner Sanctum behind, and soon I'm swooping over the Neighborhood.
I'm making good progress when something strange happens.
The light suddenly fades, as if someone has hit the dimmer switch. Across the city, the bright orbs of light are reduced to a dull glow, making it hard for me to see above the clouds. I turn 360 degrees to try and see what's happened. Before I can get my bearings, all of the lights go out, plunging the city into darkness.
A power cut.
It takes less than a second for my eye-lens to adjust and refocus, but when it does, all I can see is miles of thick soot-gray cloud. I still can't find my bearings.
I need to get lower.
I begin my descent, and a warning tone is triggered inside of my hardware. Collision imminent.
Before I can adjust my trajectory, I hit something solid, and for a moment, I'm thrown off course. Then there's a loud snap.
I'm going down.
A hairline crack appears across the front of my lens. Everything is cast in a red glow as the drone's emergency features kick in. Rooftops come into view. I'm dovetailing now, faster, faster – the ground rushes toward me.
Chapter 62
I'm stuck.
Grounded.
I can't see a thing. Can't move. It sounds as if only one of my propellers is spinning. My lens is cracked and covered in dirt.
I haven't a clue where I am.
All I know is that I'm not across the border yet, which means that although Edward and Neeve will be able to pinpoint my location from the tracker in the drone, they can't get to me until the code to lift the firewall has propagated.
Which could be another seven hours.
Can I stay hidden that long? Will they send Dash to find me?
I don't want to be stuck in this thing forever.
I start to count.
When I get to 980, a familiar sound rips through the morning.
The Work Alarm.
I'm in the Old City.
I'm in an expensive, hi-tech Telepathe drone, grounded in the Old City.
This does not bode well.
Chapter 63
Doors creak and slam, and hundreds of footsteps rush by me on their way to the nearest shuttle stop. It's only a matter of time before someone spots me or steps on me.
Over the commotion, I hear a male voice muttering, getting closer, and then through the layer of dust covering my lens, I can just about make out the rough outline of a pair of boots stopping in front of me.
Suddenly I'm moving again, tipped on my side, lifted up. For a moment, I see shadowy images and silhouettes of pedestrians flash in front of my lens before my hearing becomes muffled, and everything gets darker still.
I'm either in a bag or under someone's coat. And it seems we're on the move.
The sounds of footsteps and traffic are faint now, distant, but I can hear heavy breathing and the thud of an excited heartbeat.
Who is it that has found me? A Cog will take me right back to the Telepathe. A Worker might fix me up and try to sell me.
I start to count again. The higher I get, the more I think it can't be a Cog who's got me, because we would have been in a truck by now, speeding toward Central Square. We're still on foot, from what I can tell.
When I get to 1,098, we stop. I hear a key turn in a lock. A door opens and closes. Footsteps cross a hard floor. There's a gentle thud beneath me as I'm set down. Then suddenly, I can see again as a boy removes me from a backpack to inspect his find.
He wipes my lens with a cloth. He's 18, maybe. I can see the pores on his face and the fibers of the fabric in sharp resolution.
“An AH12oo,” he says under his breath. “And there I was mad about not getting a job alert.” He spins my propellers and then takes them off, one by one, setting them down on the table in front of me. Then he walks out of my field of vision.
The house reminds me of places I've lived in all my life. I can see a threadbare sofa doubling up as a bed with a crumpled duvet, a random collection of ‘garden’ furniture in place of proper chairs, and on the floor, a stash of carrier bags overflowing with clothes and personal belongings.
I'm on a table in the middle of the room, next to a half-eaten plate of pizza that has started to grow green mold.
The boy comes back, holding a screwdriver and some tape. He tears off a piece of tape with his teeth and wraps it around one of my legs.
So that's what the snapping sound was.
Next, he turns me upside down so that everything in my view is slightly off balance. He goes to work with the screwdriver. I can hear every turn of the screw.
I'm momentarily moving through the air again as he detaches the camera from the body of the drone and holds me right up to his face.
“Shame about the lens,” he says, blowing his breath on me and wiping the condensation with the bottom of his shirt. He sets me back down on the table and I see him unscrewing the top half of the drone from the base. When he has the two pieces separated, I can see all of the wiring inside.
He lets out a whistle. “That's different,” he says. “Let's have a look at the motor.”
He fiddles with something in the guts of the drone and then disappears from view again.
“Hey, it's Cole,” I hear him say, “I need a favor. You know where I can get a motor for an AH1200?”
I don't know how long I sit upside down on the table, unable to move. My lens searches for an open window to fly through once he fixes me, but the only one I can see in this place is covered with cardboard.
I wonder how much flying time I have left on my battery.
It must be less than ten minutes.
I watch him pacing around in the house. Every so often, he peels back a corner of the cardboard and peeks out of the window.
The fourth time he does this, he mutters, “about time,” and then someone is banging on the door.
‘Cole’ goes to open it and lets another guy into the house. I can see that this guy is older than Cole, maybe in his late twenties, and overweight.
He whistles when he sees me on the table. “You really have got an AH1200,” he says, coming closer to inspect me. “If I give you this, I want half the sale price,” he says, dangling an envelope in front of Cole.
“Twenty percent,” Cole replies. “You're not the only one who can get me a motor, Mikey.”
“You're cold, man,” Mikey hands the envelope to him. “Where'd you find it anyway?”
Mikey leans back against the counter while Cole comes back over to me. “In the gutter, a couple of blocks away.”
All I can see now are Cole's dirty jeans in extreme close up.
“Aren't you going to need a soldering iron for that?” Mikey says.
“Nah, no need for that.”
Out of the very corner of my lens, I see Cole pull out the wires from the inside of the drone and snip them away from the motor. Then he removes an inch of the plastic casing from each of them. He takes the new motor out of the envelope and attaches the two exposed ends of each of the wires to the new motor.
“That'll do for a temporary measure,” he says.
“Where're you thinking of taking it?” Mikey asks. “You don't want to get caught on the street with something like that.”
“You think I've got a death wish or something? I'll be posting it online. Sell it to the highest bidder.”
He lifts me up and reattaches me to the drone. There's more screwing. Then he turns me 180 degrees, and I can see the right way up again.
“You might not get as much as you think without a remote,” Mikey says.
“You don't need a remote. You just need the right software,” Cole mutters, reattaching the propellers. “It's a shame because I don't know if the free software I have will work on an AH1200. It's a pretty advanced model to begin with, and this one has been souped up quite a bit.”
“But it's worth a try, right?”
Cole gives my propellers another little spin.
“Pass me my tablet,” he says to Mikey. “It's there on the couch.”
If I can get him to think he's operating me, I might have a chance to escape.
Mikey passes Cole a battered and scratched tablet that must have been swapped for DN8 in the Ghetto. I watch as Cole taps away at the screen.
“Right; let's see what you can do,” he mutters. “Can you hover?”
On cue, I lift off the table. Mikey and Cole whoop with joy and Mikey slaps Cole on the back. “Yes! Let's take it outside,” he says.
“No way! Are you crazy? If we get spotted with this… I just want to swap it for some real cash.”
“It's not even 8:00 a.m. Come on, five minutes, max. You need to test it properly before you sell it anyway, right?”
Cole shakes his head, unconvinced.
“Once up and down the street then. And that's it,” Mikey says.
Cole sighs. “Okay. But after that, it's staying locked up in the cupboard until I find a buyer.”
“Yes! Come on. Let's do this.”
Mikey waddles to the door and opens it, letting a tantalizing bit of daylight spill in. He peers out into the street and turns back to us, grinning. “Coast is clear.”
“Wait,” Cole says. “It's not working anymore.”
Shoot. I need to hover.
I lift myself back off the table.
“Hmm, there must just be a lag in the software,” Cole says. “Right… Let's take you for a spin.”
I hum carefully toward the door and freedom, like a moth to a flame. I can't help thinking that at any moment, Cole is going to change his mind and the door is going to slam shut, trapping me in here. But then I'm out, hovering in the middle of a crumbling old street.
And I'm free.
I accelerate up into the air as fast as I can. I get past the rooftops and into the sky before I allow myself to look down.
I see Cole and Mikey staring up at me, a mixture of annoyance and confusion on their faces.
I right myself and fly on toward the border, keeping the city to my back. Soon I'm heading over the wasteland of the border and the fence is glinting below me.
Now all I can see are trees.
Edward and Neeve are down there somewhere, waiting for me.
I descend into the leafy expanse and land with a slight bump on the forest floor, battery life spent.
It's quiet, calm. Unfamiliar.
I wonder how far away from the bunker I've landed?
There's nothing I can do now but wait.
Chapter 64
The forest is quietly alive. Tiny birds hop around the drone in the dirt, searching for food and nest materials. Squirrels race up the trees in the surrounding wood. Insects buzz and crawl over me.
I think about seeing Selena and Reece again; putting Mum's memory disk out into the world to topple Robert, and getting her and Dad back.
About an hour later, I hear soft, tentative footsteps approaching.
“There you are,” says a voice on the breeze.
Gloved hands lift me from my hiding place on the forest floor and then Neeve's face is staring into my lens.
I made it.
“Let's get you out of here,” she murmurs, shrugging her bag onto the ground to put me inside.
Once I'm in, she straps the bag to her back and starts running. With each stride, I bump against her body.
After a while, she slows, and I guess we've reached the bunker. I hear branches snapping and a creaking sound – it must be the grate opening. I don't hear the key turn in the lock, though. The door at the bottom of the steps must already be open for us. I bump against Neeve's back again as she crosses the room.
I don't hear Edward. Where's my celebratory ‘welcome back, we did it,’ party, I wonder?
Neeve takes me out of her bag and sets me down on a table next to a flashlight, a laptop, and a couple of monitors.
Right away, I see that something's not right.
This isn't the bunker.
Where are we?
It looks like we're in some kind of cabin. A single light bulb flickers from the ceiling above us. The walls look wooden. To the right, my body sits motionless on one of the chairs from Edward's hidden room. There are a couple of rucksacks and some bedding piled up on the floor next to it.
To the left, there's a doorway without a door, but it's too dark to see what's on the other side. There's no furniture in the room, except for the table I'm on and two striped deck chairs that have seen better days.
They've left the bunker in a hurry.
I want to scream – Where's Edward? Where are we? What's happening?
“I'm going to power you down now while I do the transfer,” Neeve says.
This time, there's no 30-second count down.
Before I know what's happening, everything goes black.
When I open my eyes, everything hurts. There's ringing in my ears. I look to the left to see the drone on the table. I look down and move my hands, raising them to touch my face and my hair.
I'm Aura again.
Neeve is leaning against the opposite wall of the room, watching me. “How do you feel?”
My mind races through all of the sensations that I'm experiencing being back in my physical body. I feel weak and tired – but mostly just confused.
“What is this place?” I ask. My voice comes out with a croak. “Where's your dad? And why aren't we in the bunker?”
She walks over to the table, pulls out a chair. I notice now that her eyes are red. “The plan didn't work, Aura.”
It takes me a moment to process her words.
What?
“It was the power cut. It reset all of the machines in The Telepathe. The code didn't have a chance to propagate.”
I feel like I've been gut-punched.
“What?” I ask, crushed.
No, no, no, no, no.
“We didn't dare stay at the bunker. Thanks to William Watts, the search is on for Alex Harper, and when they find him – when they find his empty Vessel – Calvin will know we're up to something,” she says. “My father doesn't trust him to spare us a second time.”
We failed.
What do we do now?
“Where is Edward?” I ask.
“In bed. We haven't slept since you left. He lost it when he realized what had happened. Started smashing things, tearing everything up,” she says. “When the tracker stopped moving in the Old City and we thought we'd lost you, he quieted down a bit. He only agreed to rest when he knew you'd made it across the border.”
