Bitstream

13.5

"What's the problem?" asks Fingers dolefully.

"The door's locked behind a firewall," I say.

"You don't know how to crack it?"

"Oh," I reply. "Well, I do. It just might, uh – well, let's not waste any more time than we need to."

Fingers lets out a sigh and looks back towards the elevator; the doors have closed again, presumably called up by someone else, which makes this worse, because if anyone saw us take the elevator down to the sub-levels, they might already be sending someone after us.

Which also means I'll have to act fast.

I'm not entirely confident in my ability to crack firewalls, especially not complex ones, but I remember the conversation I had with Dance months ago in the back of Fingers' jeep, when he walked me through the steps to solving the puzzles. From what I remember, the solutions can be found by vertical and horizontal positioning. If I take 'N2' as the p-sequence, I would vertically fall to the first 'N' (N6), and assume 'X' does not equal 'N' and skip to the first visible N on the horizontal sequence (N5).

N5 is the first solution.

From there, it's a matter of repetition:

R6, XX, K7, A9, P3, C3, M7, XX, U6.

So far, so good. Now I have to solve for 'X', which is where my worry arises. Dance told me it was a game of sorts, where I had to take what information was available on the board and find out which letter could possibly be associated with 'X'. And to do this I would compare both vertical lines in the X-sequence. (X)1 could possibly be O2, (X)8, C2, M5, or P6. Now, if I check the third sequence from the top-left, under (X)2, it can either be Y7, U5, N5, (X)7, or W6. The only match is (X)7 and (X)8. So if I check the horizontal line of letters on the (X)7 p-string, I get two possible matches: M5 matching with M5, or O6 matching with O2. But I also remember that the 'X' p-strings act as walls in the puzzle, meaning the solution has to be O2.

X = O

Meaning this is my complete sequence:

R6, O6, K7, A9, P3, C3, M7, O2, U6.

I input the answers into the solution box, and immediately the hand-scanner blinks green. An 'Access granted' voice plays out, and the door slides open with a wet, pneumatic sigh. Beyond it is another corridor carved from old concrete, walls sweating with mildew under strip-lights, though this time it's sided with various doors that offer no windows, and at the very end there's an old pallet rack with shattered glass. It must have been a Lumina loading tray at some point. Judging by the yellow goo smeared along the metal framework, I'm nearly certain of it.

The air here's thick as hell, as if the mould has learned how to sweat poison. My HUD keeps fluttering with warnings: humidity spikes, trace ammonia, an organic signature that doesn't quite map to anything in the public databanks. The kind of readout that says 'turn around' without ever needing words. We keep slow, almost unconsciously crouched, letting the Chroma-Skin do its work. My nerves want to invent sounds: claws on concrete, the slick slide of something big pulling itself out of a vent. I tell myself it's just condensation trickling down metal, but the thought doesn't quite stick.

At the junction, we take a right. Fingers has the map of the place brought up on her HUD – it's in the Cloud Chat Room – and I trust her sense of navigation until, eventually, I hear the first of them.

A wet cough of hydraulics, a hiss like an animal warning you off, and then the shuffle of feet: bare, calloused pads slapping against concrete, but heavy. Very heavy. At the end of the corridor, there's an open door with a slatted overlook on the other side. We edge up to it until we have a clear view from a metal walkway that is part of a larger structure encircling the entirety of what lies beneath: a cavernous chamber, its guts lit in strips of pallid white that seem to make the shadows darker.

This is it. Carrow's lab.

It stretches out like a factory floor built on a fever dream: scaffolds stacked three storeys high, cages welded to girders, catwalks sagging under rust and cages. The chamber's ceiling is laced with pipes and old sprinklers, crusted white with lime scale. They drip intermittently, as though the building itself is sweating. Below, there are chimps everywhere – dozens, maybe more. Not wild. No, each one shaved and scarred, backs latticed with implants, shoulders wired to black boxes that blink soft red. Some crouch over consoles, long fingers plucking data-keys with impossible precision. Others haul crates of yellow vials across the floor. Their eyes are the worst. Milky glass one moment, neon pinpoints the next, like some cheap optic trying to keep sync. When the light catches them just right, you see the reflection of code scrolling in their irises, like the whole lab is looking out at you through them.

In the centre of the chamber stands the refining rig: a skeletal tower of chrome ribs and pulsating tubes, the kind of tech that looks alive, breathing. Yellow fluid sloshes inside its veins, pumped through filters, split, recombined, until it drips into racks of little ampoules at the base. Lumina. Ward's dream, bottled and tagged. And looming beside it, half-hidden behind a curtain of cables, is a bigger silhouette, something hunched. A chimp, but swollen grotesque: chest split open to accommodate a steel cradle, ribs bent outward like a cage around a throbbing engine. Its arms hulk against restraints as a pair of technicians in hazmat whites scurry around it, adjusting dials, tightening straps. It's the biggest chimp I've ever seen, that I've ever thought biologically possible. It must be the size of a small car, and the fact that it's being contained by nothing but steel restraints is, in fact, terrifying.

And just like before when I was in The Monkey's Tail talking to Crowjack with Chitters glaring at me from the corner of the booth, my heart starts racing, and I suddenly find it challenging to breathe steadily.

"Christ," rasps Fingers. "Don't tell me Ward is workin' on creating an army of mutant chimps next. Look at the armour on that thing."

I don't answer. I can't. My throat feels knotted. The thing on the slab isn't armour so much as augmentation, ribs split wide to house a steel exoskeleton fused right into the bone. Black tubing snakes in and out of its flesh like intravenous parasites, pulsing, pulsing, pulsing. The chest rises shallow, every breath a mechanical wheeze amplified by the metal frame. I catch the smell, burnt protein and antiseptic, an animal smell, but flattened and overwritten by the stink of solder and ozone.

The workers move around it with practised indifference, their white hazmat suits creased with old stains, visors fogged from the heat. One feeds a line of yellow fluid straight into the beast's neck port, and the creature spasms, whole frame shaking the platform. Another fastens a cranial brace, spikes sliding into skull plates with an audible click-click-click that makes my molars ache. The chimp groans. Not an animal sound. Something more, something closer to speech caught under static. My stomach turns again.

I don't know which is worse: the fact that this thing could break loose at any moment and sniff out people like us despite our invisibility, or the fact that this is all too similar to the case of Priest back in The Scrubs; I'm getting this enormous sense of déjà vu that doesn't sit right regardless.

Below us, the smaller chimps continue their strange choreography: hauling crates, keying in commands, scuttling along the scaffold like mechanics born in another skin. Their coordination is eerie, hive-like. No words, no signals. Just movement, as though the lab itself breathes through them. One of them looks up at us for a moment, and I think, with quite the panic, that they can see us through their cybernetic eyes, but to my relief it quickly looks away and returns to its duties.

They might not be able to see us directly, but they might be able to smell something off. So we have to be careful. You don't need infrared cameras when you have animals for employees.

Then, out of nowhere, a voice cuts through, and I swear every syllable is dipped in formaldehyde:

"Too much, I think. Step back."

From the far end of the chamber, a man comes in, thin as hunger, white coat hanging open like a priest's vestments. His hair clings damp to his skull, skin sallow as wax paper. He doesn't rush; he drifts, hands folded behind his back, gaze locked on the monstrous chimp as if the rest of the world doesn't exist. A quick-scan tells me this is Mezhane Carrow, and that he, sure enough, has little to no augmentations, meaning that if we do manage to catch him all by his lonesome, it shouldn't be too difficult taking him out. The scan also tells me he has a gauntlet, similar to the one Obadele had on the cargo ship, but rather than having netrunning capabilities, it has a failsafe button. I presume this is in case something goes horribly wrong and the place needs to be immediately shut down.

I don't know, and I'd prefer not to find out.

The hazmat workers obey his command without question, withdrawing their hands from the restraints. The big chimp thrashes once, hard enough that chains rattle across the catwalk, but Carrow doesn't flinch. He tilts his head, studying the tremor like a parent watching a child test its legs.

"There," he says finally, almost to himself. "The serum finds its rhythm. The override holds."

He raises a hand, delicate, and one of the wired chimps scuttles down a scaffold to place a datapad in his palm. Carrow scans it, nods once, then turns to the monstrous thing, his smile faint and terrible.

"Decrease the feed by six per cent," Carrow says, as if asking for the lights to be dimmed before dinner.

One of the hazmats hurries to a console set into the railing, latex gloves squeaking as he drags a dial counter-clockwise. The hoses stitched into the beast's chest shudder, yellow fluid slowing in its veins. The monstrous chimp wheezes, shoulders slumping against the restraints, and the red glow in its eyes flickers down to a low, dim pulse.

"Good," Carrow says, gaze never leaving the creature. He taps the datapad once, twice, almost tenderly, then sets it on the edge of the console. "Too much, and the host resists. Too little, and the mind slips back into noise. But here"—he gestures, fingers describing a surgeon's flourish in the air—"it begins to balance. The code writes itself into flesh. The body becomes instrument, and the instrument, obedient."

The hazmat worker lets out a muffled sigh through his gas mask. "Doctor, the strain markers—"

"Will stabilise," Carrow cuts him off. "They always stabilise."

"Alright," the worker says. "On another note, the trucks are ready for pick-up. We should probably get a start on loading up the pallets because this month's batch is pretty high. Ward's really wanting some excess material by the end of the first quarter. Not sure what her deal is."

"This month's batch is different," Carrow says, and now he isn't smiling. His eyes catch the worker with so much intensity that I think he's probably high on Lumina himself, or perhaps he hasn't gotten much sleep in a place this… well, this. "Higher concentration. I think Ward will be most pleased with the results of this Lumina variation, and one can only hope it doesn't melt the brain of someone dumb enough to take it in great abundance."

"Should we get a start then?" the worker asks.

"Do," says Carrow. "I'll be up shortly to the loading bay to open the trucks. Just be sure to keep the crates upright. The seals are more delicate this time."

The worker nods, half-bowing, and moves off with another hazmat. Their boots clank hollowly on the catwalk as they descend towards the floor. One of them claps his hands together and the chimps all begin stacking Lumina trays and bringing them over to pallets for loading. Intelligent little buggers, perhaps too intelligent.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Carrow remains. He steps closer to the hulking form in the rig, resting his hand lightly on the railing as if addressing a friend across a table. "Alright, Titan. You rest well now."

Titan. One hell of a name for an ape. Though, I guess it's less intimidating than King Kong.

Titan gives a low, rumbling breath that shakes the restraints. The sound is halfway between a growl and a sigh, and for a moment I swear there's something behind it. A note of awareness.

Carrow leans in. "I know it hurts. But the flesh always rebels before it accepts its new song. Trust me: soon the dissonance will pass."

"What a lunatic," says Fingers in a low voice. "But it looks like they're clearing out. There's a separate elevator off to the far right."

I look over to the far right and see that indeed there is a separate elevator. Much larger, built to hold several pallets at once. The chimps and hazmat workers roll them inside with unsettling ease, which is even more concerning because it means these creatures are not only highly intelligent but also incredibly strong. If we get caught then they can easily pile on top of us and tear us limb from limb. It's not like we can take them all on at once, pistol or no pistol, mantisblade or no mantisblade.

Carrow walks away from Titan and heads for a large door that splits apart in the shape of a sideways Z, and when it shuts behind him we make our way down the left side of the metal walkway, watching the workers and chimps below; careful not to draw any attention. There are cameras farther ahead, but I deactivate them swiftly with 'Manual Override'.

From time to time the walkway sways and groans under our weight, but with all the chatter and chitter no one, or no thing, seems to notice. They simply carry on stacking up the Lumina pallets and head into the giant elevator. One chimp doesn't follow suit with the others, and a hazmat worker zaps it with a tesla baton which causes it to roll over and squeal. It's awful and creepy and disheartening all at once. But I push onwards anyway, following Fingers' vague outline, keeping my hand to her back, just in case I lose her and end up stuck with the apes. Just in case she doesn't notice I'm not with her.

And when we ease along the catwalk and reach the bend where the cameras had been, the space splits into branching paths: one stairwell curling down to the floor, another corridor slipping off behind the wall of cages. We need to head through the Z-shaped door. So down we go, steady now. Don't make a sound. Just—

Fingers pushes back on me with her arm, keeping me in place. Before I can ask what the problem is, I notice, out of the corner of my eye, another chimp, this one locked inside a cage, and like before it's looking directly at us, despite our invisibility. It's holding a half-crushed vial, yellow fluid dribbling between its fingers like syrup. It tilts its abominable furless head and lets out an even more abominable 'ooh-ooh'. It bears its teeth, chitters, and then lets out a great, horrifying 'Aah!'

The sound jolts through the chamber like a flare gun, sharp enough to pierce the chorus of chitter and chain-clank. My heart leaps to my throat, certain this is it, that every eye below will snap upward and drag us into the open.

But before the chimp can screech again, a hazmat worker wheels on it with frightening speed. He's small, stoop-shouldered, visor fogged from the chemical haze, but his movement is clean, practised. The baton cracks against the cage bars with a high-voltage crackle, the blue arc lighting up the chimp's teeth in mid-scream. It jerks back with a snarl, drops the vial, and shrinks into the shadow of the scaffold, lip curling but silent now.

"Quiet," the worker hisses through the mask, voice muffled but razor-sharp. He prods the air once more with the crackling baton, then turns away as though nothing happened, muttering to himself, "Stupid monkeys."

The yellow fluid spreads in a gooey puddle across the metal, reeking sweet and metallic. Another chimp scuttles over, lapping it greedily until the worker notices and kicks it aside, boot slamming wet against the floor. The others never break rhythm; they keep hauling, stacking, moving in that eerie synchrony, as if the warning cry had been swallowed whole.

"Too close," says Fingers.

And, randomly, all I can think is: chimps aren't monkeys.

I don't know why. I just do. Maybe it's the panic messing with my train of thought. Don't care.

As we sneak down the stairwell to the lab floor, most of the chimps and workers have moved into the giant industrial elevator with as many pallets as they can pack, and when the shutters close and they start going up, we head for the Z-shaped door. It's taller up close than it looked from the catwalk – taller and meaner, black steel with edges that gleam like a razor pressed too long against skin. I can smell it too: not just the bleach and mould rot of the corridors, not the animal stink, but the door itself, as if the metal has soaked up years of chemical wash, scorched oil, and blood. It smells like something's been cooked into it, left to season in misery.

It opens automatically when we approach, one of those movement-sensing doors, and on the other side is yet another chamber, but smaller than the factory floor we just left – intimate, almost domestic even, if your idea of domesticity is hell's waiting room. The walls are wrong: neither panels nor concrete nor steel, but instead layered plastic sheets with foil and tarpaulin, all patched with rivets and bolts like someone was afraid they might rot away. Beads of condensation drip from seams and patter down into shallow trays on the floor. Lights buzz overhead, naked fluorescents strung from cables, painting everything in morgue tones. The floor's littered with glass, tubing, and surgical wrappers that still shine, as though someone tore them open only minutes ago.

At the far end is a slab. Not a table or a gurney. A slab, steel and unforgiving, mounted on tracks so it can slide sideways into a recess in the wall. Straps hang from it, stiff with dried something. Brown, tacky. Looks like blood, though I'm not entirely sure. The whole room has this echo of pain long since scrubbed away but never gone. You can bleach blood, you can burn skin off steel, but you can't unteach a place what it's seen.

And there he is.

Carrow.

He's got his back turned to us, typing at a computer terminal by a central console. Carrow's pale fingers dance over the keys, his wrists bone-thin and spotted with old implant scars. He pauses now and then to jot notes, pages already scattered like dead leaves across the console. And then I realise he has something plugged into the console itself, something fist-sized and rectangular.

I run a quick-scan.

Control Shard Detected

Designation: Transit Override Key (T.O.K.)

Function: Authorizes and deactivates Lumina freight-lock security protocols.

Clearance Level: Tier-Black (Carrow Only).

"That's it," I say, pointing. "The shard's in the console."

Before Fingers can respond, the door hisses shut behind us, and Carrow looks back. Instinctively, we dash to either side behind a pair of surgical tables, and he presses a finger to his temple, causing his optics to flash blue.

"Someone there?" he says, scanning the place.

I do my best to tuck myself behind the table entirely, in case some of the Chroma-Skin gets caught by his scanner, and in doing so my shaky hand accidentally bumps off a glass vial and sends it straight to the ground with an enormous, echoing smash.

Fucking shit!

And my heart races.

Carrow's voice needles the air. "A chimp. Why are you in here?"

I reach into the holster skin and pull out the pistol, ready for him to approach, when I realise shooting him will garner way too much attention. I have to find a way to take him down quietly.

Which, of course, leaves me with only one option.

I peek over the table, open my quick-hack list, and hit him with 'Black Iris'. Almost immediately, the hack uploads into his optics, causing them to blacken, and he suddenly stops in place.

"What?" he shouts, very loud, too damn loud. "What the hell is going—?"

When I hop over the table, Fingers grabs Carrow in a rear-naked chokehold, muscling him back against her torso with extreme pressure. He thrashes for freedom, kicks and slams and tussles, and Fingers takes him down to the ground, wrapping her invisible legs tightly around his body. I can tell by the imprints in his lab coat. Carrow's movements are slowing, more and more, slumping, sagging, until eventually… gone.

"Jesus," I say. "You took him down like he was made of paper."

"Yeah," she says, catching her breath. "While you nearly got us caught by knocking over a vial. Christ, Mono, you have to—" But she stops herself, lets out a groan, and says, "Look, it's alright. Let's just get on with it. Mistakes happen."

That catches me off guard. I was fully expecting her to lash into me, to get all bitchy about how I messed everything up. This is certainly… a response. Not dwelling on it too much, I head over to the central console and try grabbing the chip from the port, but it doesn't come out easily, and I don't want to risk fracturing it with a strong pull. "Something's wrong here. The chip's not coming out."

"It's probably processing data." Fingers approaches me. "You'll have to eject it manually from the terminal. Look for an override or ejection protocol, and if anything's currently in progress, cut it short."

I skim the terminal, fingers ghosting over keys I can't see past the shimmer of the cloak, menus nested in menus like bad dreams inside worse ones. The interface is old corporate, pale grey, fake friendly, labels running in antiseptic fonts: FREIGHT LOCK / SUBROUTINES / VEHICLE HANDSHAKE / T.O.K. SEAT. There it is. EJECT AUTH—LOCKED (PROCESSING). A line of status text crawls along the bottom, polite as a butler: writing embedded checksum… verifying lumen-batch table… please wait.

"We don't have 'wait,'" I mutter, and drop into the admin shell. Command prompt blinks like a pulse. I knife past the voice UI, into maintenance, KILL PROC 0x7f: freight_batchd, and the cursor hangs, just long enough to make my guts seize, then accepts. The status bar stutters, falls through itself, and the EJECT AUTH text softens from ash to green.

"Now," Fingers says.

I thumb the physical latch beneath the port and the shard doesn't slide out so much as unhook, a reluctant little click, a tug like pulling a thorn. It's heavier than it looks when it drops into my palm, just a slab of matte-black with an edge of gold contacts, but it hums a faint, waspish thrum you can feel in the meat of your hand. T.O.K. – Transit Override Key. The thing we bled months for, the thing that opens Ward's throat.

"Got it," I breathe, stashing it in my pocket.

But then I hear it.

Coughing.

We snap our heads back.

Carrow picks himself up on one knee and pulls his sleeve back, revealing the miniature gauntlet underneath, almost welded into the skin as if Calyx Ward brandished it there herself. Black Iris burns off his optics with a blue sputter.

He doesn't waste any time; he just presses the button and the entire place flashes red, as if an alarm's been pulled. But there's no strident beeping, no whirring sound.

Dance must have deactivated the alarm system. Thank God he at least has some brains left in that Aussie, chemical-stricken head.

But Carrow doesn't seem to care. In fact, he grins as we pull out our pistols and point them straight at him.

Sprinklers embedded in the ceiling pop open with metallic clinks, and sudden torrents of water hammer down in sheets. The fluorescents streak into smeared halos through the downpour, everything strobing siren-red. My visor floods with warnings: optics interference / audio distortion / surface traction low. The Chroma-Skin fuzzes, shimmers, re-stitches; the cloak doesn't know what to mimic when the world is nothing but rushing water and fractured light. And I remember what Fingers once told me, that enough water can deactivate the cloak.

"I suppose I've had my run," Carrow says, coughing through the spray. "Let the beast free."

Then I hear something else. From the other side of the Z-shaped door.

An enormous roaaaaaaaaar, and the sound of metal snapping, chains being let loose.

And I know exactly where that sound is coming from.

Oh, dear Lord.

"Titan," Carrow says, and then Fingers raises her pistol and blows his brains all over the floor.

"We have to get out of here," I say. "Right. Fucking. Now."

"Way ahead of you," she says, and I follow her ghostly shadow through the red-soaked curtain of falling water, through the Z-shaped door. The central lab is drenched the same way, sprinklers raining down, and I hear voices, people screaming, tesla cannons going off, orders being shouted.

I grab Fingers' arm, just in case I lose her, and when the water sheets part, I see the shadow of an enormous beast hulking through the lab. The screams and orders are cut off by the sound of bones being crushed and limbs being squelched into meaty pieces. One of them flies towards me and hits me in the leg. A whole arm.

And when I look up I see Titan, the enormous chimp, and the sound of guns going off. But the bullets just ricochet from its armour, sparking flashes of its horrible snarl through the spray before it comes down with its paws again and smashes into security and staff. Even the small chimps are scuttling away in fear.

We start making our way up the metal catwalk on the right, hoping to catch it back to the upper elevator, but the water thins in shifting sheets. I catch its eyes again. Not glassy. Not neon. Something worse. Something alive.

All around it are dead bodies, both hazmat workers and chimps, and it's breathing heavily, growling, eyes sputtering blue and red and green and even yellow, like it's caught in a manic rainbow.

"Keep moving," Fingers hisses, her shadow pulling ahead of me, nothing but a shimmer against the catwalk rails. My lungs taste like rust, my visor warning me with a new line of red text: CHROMA-SKIN: CRITICAL FAILURE.

The cloak gutters, then dies. Fingers flickers once, then she's bare in the downpour. Both our suits shut down in sync, leaving us exposed under the blood-red rain.

That's when Titan turns.

Its enormous head cranes upward, water sluicing off its snarl. Its eyes – blue, red, green, yellow – lock straight on us.

And I'm nearly paralyzed with fear.