Giving a final punch to the door, Rust shouted, “Fuuuck!” before his enormous frame went motionless.
Doug let out a relieved breath as the other cyborgs resumed animation, stumbling forward or collapsing against nearby desks and walls. Esben was near Rust and reached forward to touch the door. “The door code isn’t working.” He looked over his shoulder at Doug. “Can you open it?”
Doug attempted to access the door code and found he couldn’t. His entire system felt sluggish, his nanites less responsive than he was used to. “No. I probably need to upgrade the algorithm for our new programming.”
The cyborgs exchanged uncertain glances. “What did we just do to ourselves?” Benjy asked.
“The termination code can’t kill us now.” Doug was becoming more and more certain Twerp’s code had actually worked as the seconds ticked by.
Emilryde moved to the Consort Chamber door and tried to pry it open. “A lot of good that does us if we’re trapped in here.”
Twobit grinned and opened a cabinet. “Oh, we’re not trapped.” He pulled out a surgical laser. “We have all the weapons we need to take over the ship right here.”
While Twobit and Esben pulled more equipment from the cabinets, Doug chased a fix for the door code. But a functional algorithm was proving elusive. It was as if his nanites had lost all logic. They just have a few bugs, he reassured himself. That’s normal for an untested program. But he was getting worried that he couldn’t nail down the code. How were they going to get out of here? And what was Dollard planning now?
Pausing his work on the door, he tried to access the security cameras. The dampening field felt impossibly strong. He couldn’t get through. What had Twerp done to them? Dollard would come up with something to destroy the cyborgs eventually, and he needed to know what was coming to mount a defense.
What if Dollard is going after Attie? Dread settled in the pit of his stomach. The doctor had seen Twerp’s transmission. He could trace it back to Attie. Bringing up every algorithm he could think of, Doug tried to access the systems in the shuttle bay. He needed to make sure Attie was safely off the ship. The damn dampening field was impervious.
He moved to the nearest computer and placed both hands on it, hoping proximity would bolster his connection. The lab computers had been disconnected from the mainframe. There was no way to hack out of the lab.
Is Twerp still connected to the heart chip? She’d stopped communicating after sending the new program.
Closing his eyes, Doug felt for the familiar signature. He felt like a blind man, but eventually, he sensed it. It still had the old version of the nanites, but he could connect. Twerp, are you there?
Yes, Doug?
A wave of agony lanced through Doug’s body, followed quickly by more.
The other cyborgs collapsed around him, filling the lab with groans.
He crashed to the floor as well, vision wavering out of focus. He couldn’t think. Couldn’t act. His nanites were on fire. And there could only be one cause.
Dollard had pushed the button.
Chapter 18
A lightning storm had descended on Twerp’s circuits, sizzling with agonizing swiftness through her sensors. For a millisecond, she thought Doug might be trying to destroy her again. Then she realized the pain was affecting him, too.
It was coming from the heart chip.
“Twerp, what’s wrong?” Attie asked.
But Twerp was unable to answer. The only explanation for the excruciating pain arching through every byte of her existence was that someone had used the termination code. And she was vulnerable. But why? It had to be because the heart chip still had the original nanites encoded. As long as she and Doug were connected, would act like a transmitter.
“Remove the chip,” Twerp attempted to say. But all that came out was a horrible crackling sound.
The connection to the chip had trapped her into a synchronous loop, transmitting the termination code like an infection. The code created a resonance like the technology used in a ship’s burn drive to travel faster than light. Twerp knew this frequency. She’d studied it before, when Marlis had decided to accept the nanites.
It was a version of the Denaidan mating frequency.
“I will not let it kill me,” Twerp said, although the words emerged as garbled nonsense.
Following the thread of data, she tunneled into the heart chip and beyond, to the source of the transmission. She had to do something. Anything. If she didn’t, she and the cyborgs would all die. With a subtle change to the sine wave, she changed the frequency.
The pain stopped.
“Twerp?” Attie removed the heart chip, the terror in her voice apparent even without Twerp’s biometric sensors to translate emotion. “Are you okay?”
Twerp wasn’t sure. She felt as if a weight had lifted, but it still hovered, ready to flatten her. “Someone activated the termination code.”
Attie gasped. “What about Doug? Did you reach him? Is he okay?”
“I was able to share my information, but I do not know his fate.” Twerp wasn’t about to suggest Attie reattach the heart chip so she could find out. “We have to go.”
“But Doug—”
“If he is able to join us, he knows our plan,” said Twerp. Her circuits still echoed in the aftermath of the attack, but at least she was alive. And she wanted to stay that way.
Much as Attie yearned to drag Doug out of that horrible lab, everything they’d gone through would be for nothing if she went back. All it would accomplish would be handing herself and Twerp over to the people Doug wanted them to avoid. She had to head for the shuttle and accept that Doug would meet them if he could.
Shoving Twerp and the heart chip into her rucksack, Attie hurried out of her cabin toward the lift. She looked at a hallway security camera as she passed under it. Was Doug watching?
She got into the lift with a few other people, adjusting her bag to make
