They exited the museum feeling good, for the most part.
“I’m still worried about how long it takes to code on these things,” Jacob said, holding the flipper with his thumb and forefinger.
“Yeah, that didn’t go so smooth,” Two-Step said.
“Any ideas?”
Xia said, “We could write the code first and have it loaded in a packet on the phone when you go in.”
“That might work,” Jacob said, “but getting past the system security is going to be the hard part.”
“You’re not going to link directly with the system?” Two-Step asked.
“I will if I can. I’ll be by myself there. When I’m linked, I won’t be able to tell if someone comes into the room. I’ll be a sitting duck.”
“Kat can monitor for you from the outside,” Xia said.
“That’s the plan, but I want to be prepared for anything. You can never have too many good options,” Jacob said.
Chapter 44
As they neared The Galleria in the van, Two-Step asked to be dropped off at The Tower so he could go to The Market. Jacob pulled into a parking lot to let him out. “I’m going to cook dinner for Haley tonight,” he said before he opened the door. “You remember that customer, Bahir? He bought some old laptops a few weeks ago. Anyway, he came in the store the other day and said his uncle was getting some real goat meat. I asked him to hold some for me. Real goat meat. I haven’t had real goat meat since I left home.”
Xia reacted as if she had bitten into a rotten egg. Jacob laughed.
“What?” Two-Step asked.
“The idea of eating an actual dead animal is disgusting,” Xia said.
“Not as disgusting as vat-grown meat. Meat grown in a lab just isn’t right. I don’t know how people can grow up and never taste a real chicken. Or a steak. And rabbit. Real food. That’s the only thing I miss about being back home. Fresh food all of the time. It was the best. The garden is decent, and Pigeon Eater’s pigeons are fine, but nothing like home.”
“Don’t even get me started on eating pigeon,” Xia said.
As they spoke, Jacob noticed a crowd gathering at one end of the parking lot. “What’s going on over there?” he asked.
Xia turned to look. “I can’t see.”
“Maybe we should check it out,” Two-Step said.
As soon as Jacob opened the door of the van, he heard the screams. The sound was unlike any he had heard, a guttural moan turning to a wail and back again. He still couldn’t see what was happening, but everything about it told him it was another overload. Grabbing his code deck, he started running toward the crowd.
He got to the crowd, pushing people out of the way. A teenage boy lay on his back, staring at the sky. His body didn’t convulse, it was tense and rigid except his fingers. As he moaned and wailed, he tapped the tips of his fingers, one at a time, in rapid succession on to the tips of his thumbs.
Jacob knelt beside the boy. He scanned the boy’s tattoo and tried to link to his subdermal chip, but his chip poured large packets of data into the cloud and blocked Jacob’s attempts.
Xia knelt next to Jacob. “Any luck?”
“I can’t link for some reason.”
He looked around at the gathered crowd. “Does anyone know what code he’s doing?”
Another teenager said, “It was just a simple upper.”
Jacob could see this kid was also on code and a bit freaked out. He had the look of someone who has seen something coming for him and doesn’t have time to get out of the way.
“Thanks,” Jacob said, still unsure of what was causing the boy’s chip to do this. Simple amphetamine code wouldn’t explain why the chip was streaming data. He’d never seen code of any type make a chip act this way. “Do you have your deck?” he asked Xia.
“I do, but I can’t use it for this. We can’t chance me getting fired.”
Damn, she was right.
“Two-Step, give Xia your deck,” Jacob said over a wail that continued to build until the boy ran out of breath.
“I can help,” Two-Step said, taking his deck out of his backpack.
“Xia’s better at this sort of thing than you are.”
Two-Step didn’t argue and gave her the deck. Xia logged in on Two-Step’s deck and work with Jacob to establish a link.
“What in the hell is going on?” Jacob asked, looking at his deck’s display. The only medical code he saw was a small amount of a simple amphetamine analog, just as the other boy said. He couldn’t see anything that would create a reaction like this.
Then he saw it. It wasn’t the medical code that was the problem. Another command was instructing the chip to send terabytes of data. It was like someone was siphoning his brain to the cloud.
“Xia, are you seeing this?”
“I just linked. I see it, but I don’t know what it is.”
“Me neither. Let’s try to stop it.”
“Should we direct link?”
A direct link would allow them a better chance of quickly finding out what was going on and stop it, but it could be dangerous. Without knowing why the chip was uploading data to the cloud, they couldn’t take the chance of being caught in the same situation as the boy.
“No. Too many unknowns. Besides, we may not be able to. What will it do to him if we get into the chip’s system and force a hard reboot?”
Xia considered as the boy’s moan started its build back into a wail. “Normally, I would say he will be fine after a reboot, but I just don’t know.”
“I don’t think we have much of a choice. I don’t know how much of this he can take. Two-Step, pull the van over here in case we need to get him to an emergency room.”
Two-Step ran to the van. Jacob and Xia worked to infiltrate the chip’s operating system.
“I’m in,” Xia said. “This system looks familiar.”
“I see it.” It
