Chapter 9

 

 

I don't think it really occurred to me that this was a war until I see the first bodies hit the floor. The smell of death is rich in the air. Bullets are flying all around me. Most are bullets from our side. They are desperate revolutionaries trying to stop an assault. You would think there were multiple people shooting. You'd think it was a true ambush.

But it wasn't.

It was one man. A lone gunman taking us all out.

"Get down!"

My heart is racing when Bronx pulls me behind a table. The sounds of bullets cause the entire foundation to shake. To my right, I see Nano, perched as low as he can. Larson is a little bit more aggressive.

"You killed her! THAT PIECE OF SHIT KILLED HER!"

I hadn't known Larson was that close to Tessa. You don't really understand these kinds of relationships among survivors. He isn't crying but he's angry. He's barely aiming. His hand has weaponized into a shotgun and the mere force of it all is getting to me.

Unfortunately, it doesn't have that impact on the Programmer!

"DUCK!"

I'm not sure who warns him. I'm assuming maybe Bronx or Nano, but I see something almost crashing into Larson. He ducks---just in time. It isn't until I look up that I notice it's a body. It's the body of someone who had died.

"Where's my dad?"

I'm desperate to find him. I get up and everything. Instead of him, however, I see a man standing there. The man has red eyes. He's wearing a plain suit. In his hands is a gun. I look around desperate to find my father but instead, I find death. All around me there are bodies. I'd never seen so many dead bodies. A sea of them.

There are more trying to fight this predator but it's pointless. Bodies are dropping like flies.

That's when it turns to me!

Holy shit.

"MOVE!"

Just then the Programmer shoots at me. Some fool uses the Programmer being distracted by me as an opportunity to try to take it down. It tries to jump on the Android's back. That's when I feel a hand grabbing me from behind. The hand belongs to Bronx.

Bronx is pulling me away towards the staircase but that's when I see the Programmer grab the fool up like a toy, shaking it a few times with his bare hands. And that's when the body hits the ground completely lifeless.

This thing wasn't a person.

It was an exterminator.

"You want to survive?" Bronx asks me, "CASSIUS, you want to survive OR NOT?"

I'm out of it. I'm completely out of it. The dead bodies have left me almost actionless. It isn't until I feel a strong stinging slap across my face that I snap into it. Bronx is staring back at me with an open hand. His eyes wide trying to get me to focus. The slap was hard but maybe I needed it. Maybe I was just in a daze at that moment.

My voice is hoarse but I manage to somehow get out a response, "I do...I do..."

"Then you need to snap into it...we need to run..."

"There's nowhere to go," Nano states, "I've pulled up the blueprints of this place. He's driving us upstairs----to a dead end..."

"We go back," Larson states, "We fight."

"You go up against that thing and you'll die," Bronx warns Larson.

"What about Tessa's body?" Larson asks.

"Tessa is dead. There's nothing we can do about that now."

Larson's face sours, "So it's true? Tessa always said we meant nothing more to you than a number in your suicide plan."

"That's not fair to him."

"His BOYFRIEND is the reason we are in this. This was a set-up...from the beginning," Larson explains angrily.

The fact that he is saying this is surprising because Larson was always very much so a Bronx supporter. Bronx seems just as surprised by it as the rest of us.

"It wasn't Chuck..." he states, sounding so sure of it.

"Not that many people knew the details of our meeting spot."

"Macro knew..."

"Macro wouldn't turn on us. The only person that makes sense is Chuck," Nano adds in.

Both Nano and Larson are looking at Bronx. I don't think he wants to believe it. A part of me didn't want to believe it either.

"Did any of you guys see his body down there?" Larson asks.

"We don't have time for this," Bronx states, "He's getting closer."

Bullets. Gunshots. I'd never seen someone shoot so fast. I'd never seen someone clear out the room so quickly.

It's Nano who points leading the way further up the stairs. Larson is at the back with his shotgun hand ready. Then there is Bronx. He looks like he has something on his mind and I know what it is. Deep in his mind, he's wondering how it was possible for him to get into this position.

As we get to the top of the stairs we hear a voice.

"This way..."

A familiar face and voice are trying to get our attention. It's Mrs. Finnick. She manages to get us in one of the upstairs rooms. A bunch of people is in there. One of them happens to be Macro who is sitting off to the side with a gun in his hand and blood pouring out of the other arm. He's been shot. I notice a woman about Tessa's height standing over him cleaning the wound. There are two more men that I don't know in the room.

"You boys OK?" Mrs. Finnick asks.

"We're not OK," Larson asks, "We've been betrayed. This was exactly what Tessa warned would happen if we all met in the same place."

"Listen to guys----I have a plan----"

"FUCK listening to you," Macro fumes, "I've lost friends today, Bronx. Do you realize that? Everyone is dead. Everyone."

Bronx gets quiet. It's the first time I've seen him so unsure of himself. He seems like he isn't quite sure what is going on anymore. I can see how he's confused. He doesn't want to believe my father would have done something like what he did, but everyone else believes it.

A few minutes have passed. Larson has his weapon pressed up against the wall. Nano is in his mobile device trying to find some way out of here. There is fear in everyone's eyes. This was the power of a Programmer.

Now I understood.

"You're bleeding," I notice with Bronx.

"It's just a scratch," he whispers back.

"Let me look at it..."

"Cass---"

"Let me look at it..."

He sighs reluctantly even when I get close to him and pull up his shirt. That's when I see the bullet in there. He's acting like he's strong but he has a fucking bullet in him. He's bleeding out. I'm about to say something but he shakes his head. I'm not sure why.

He doesn't want me to say anything.

I bite my tongue. Goddamit.

"We need to get out of here," I state out loud instead of telling everyone that Bronx was shot.

"The shooting has stopped," the girl with Macro announces. "Maybe it thinks it kills everyone."

"Doubt it, Melinda," Nano tells her, "The Programmers have advanced functionality. I believe it has heat sensors. The fact that the shooting has stopped means that it wants us to put our guard down."

Shit.

"It's hunting us," Larson replies.

That's when we hear it. Boom. Boom. Boom.

My heart is racing. The walls of this place are getting smaller. My chest is getting heavy.

"Here..." Bronx tells me.

He gives me a gun. An extra gun that he had. A part of me thinks it's special until I realize I'm the only idiot in the room who isn't armed. By now even Mrs. Finnick has a pistol that she's pointing at the door.

"Nano----we need an exit----" I find myself saying.

"I don't take orders from you."

"DO WHAT HE SAYS!" Bronx barks.

Nano seems irritated but manages to think of something very quickly, "We can scale the side of the wall."

I look out the window. It was high. Way too high.

"How the hell do we do that?"

"Standby----I am uploading the skills necessary to scale down a building to everyone now," Nano states.

I didn't even know that was possible. All I know though is that we're standing there one minute and the next minute Nano is on his computer. He's desperately putting in a code. And then I feel something. The only thing to compare it to is the feeling you get when you walk across a rug and touch a doorknob. It's a slight shock, but it isn't painful. It's just alerting my body to something.

Now there is something there.

Something there that wasn't there earlier.

"I can scale buildings now," I state out loud.

Nano rolls his eyes, "No shit. Now, we all can."

"Hurry up..."

Nano is the first one out of the building. Then the two guys who I don't know. Then the girl named Melinda.

"We don't have the time for this..." Macro states.

He's right. Just at that moment something slams into the door once. A few hinges go off the door. At that moment Macro, Larson and Bronx try to push up against the door. They are the biggest ones. They are the ones who can at least try to keep the Programmer out.

At this point, Mrs. Finnick is going out of the window. She's a lot slower. A lot more careful. At this point, I'm holding the door.

"Larson you next," I state.

Larson runs towards the window not arguing with me. There is someone who is concerned. It's Bronx. He's looking at me as I help Larson out of the window and he begins to scale down onto the street.

"Get out of here," Bronx states.

"I can help fight it off," I argue.

"Did I ask for your help?" he asks, "Get out of here."

"C`mon!" Macro interrupts grabbing me and pulling me to the window. He's trying to get me out of here. I know that I should probably leave with him. Macro might be actually saving my life right now, but I push away for some reason.

And that reason was that I didn't want Bronx alone.

And that's when Macro decides to stop climbing down. At this point, Bronx is pressed up against the door. He's the only thing holding the Programmer out. And he's barely able to do it.

His face, when he sees me join him at the door, is one of shock.

"You don't fuckin listen."

"Guess I'm a bad follower."

We are both at the door and even though he's pissed he'd held it with me. For a moment there isn't any banging on the door and I think we both feel like this has come to an end. Until we feel something else. One loud HARD boom on the door.

One that knocks us back.

It throws us on separate parts of the room. By the time I stop rolling across the floors, my body is etched with painful splinters. I look up at the door and there's nothing but smoke. Out of the smoke walks a figure, taller and more intimidating as it's closer.

The fucking Programmer.

"Dammit...why'd you stay?" he asks me, "I don't need your death on my hands..."

"Well then let's not die," I state.

I raise my gun and I'm shooting at its head. Nothing happens but a quick stutter as though I'm doing nothing to it but annoying it like a fly. If I was the fly than it was the swatter. It attempts to raise a gun to me but Bronx is there quickly.

As soon as he gets on top of the Programmer I manage to do the same. Desperately we take handfuls of each it's clothing and attempted to wrestle it to ground. Then Bronx released a hand-hold and used it to start jabbing the Programmer in the ribs. That's when the Programmer grabs Bronx with a hand full of hair bringing his face down sharply onto his bent knee. Blood flowed from the Bronx's broken nose and he staggered backward.

And that's when I feel it. I don't know what IT is at that moment but I know that unless I connect to this thing inside of me, we were both dead.

"Run..." Bronx is saying... "I'll hold it off. I can----"

He can barely talk. His nose is gushing blood. His bullet wound is clearly irritating him. It shows his strength that he is even able to stand. It's almost inhuman that he hasn't passed out from pure pain at this point.

"No..."

"Cassius---you will die if you don't leave."

He wanted me to abandon him. He wanted me to forget about him. I knew Bronx enough by now to know that he was OK dying the hero. A part of him always probably wondered if this was how this was going to end.

Not today.

"Not today..."

My eyes flicker at that moment and all I know is that I'm no longer myself.

~

"Over there..." he states, "A hotel."

"We have no money..."

"I'll hack into the register."

We make it to a hotel. There is blood on my knuckles and a bruise above my right eye, yet I can't recall the fight itself against the Programmer. The only thing I can remember is Bronx looking down at the Dead Programmer. He says they'll be hell to pay, but I got what I wanted. He's safe. The victory is mine.

For today at least.

I distract the front desk clerk which isn't hard to do because I'm covered in bruises. All I have to do is start screaming loud enough to get Bronx behind the computer, hacking into it and adding an account under our name with funds that we didn't have a few seconds ago. I guess that was the benefit of being online if he knew now how to do something like that.

Two minutes later we are in a room in one of the nicest hotels in the city.

"You could have gotten two rooms," I state.

It's awkward sharing a room. Even more so sharing a bed.

"Sorry I wasn't thinking about your standards of luxury with a bullet in me..." he states, "Help me get this out..."

"I don't know how to do that."

"Yes, you do. Nano uploaded basic nurse programming into your system."

I searched my memory. He was right. I did have the accurate programming to be a sufficient enough nurse to remove a bullet. Who knew?

He takes off his shirt and leans back on the bed more than happy to finally stop acting tough. As he's doing it, he's just looking at me.

"How'd you do it?" he asks me.

"Do what?"

"Kill the Programmer?"

I pause for a moment.

"I don't remember. I just sort of let something take over."

"You let the programmer inside of you take over," he states.

I shrug. I hadn't thought of it that way. All I knew was that he was in trouble and that we would have died if I hadn't done something. So I did something. Anything. I had to make sure that it worked. I had to make sure that we made it out.

"We survived, didn't we?" I ask.

He pauses, "Don't do that again, Cassius. Your father made you a Programmer, but you need to control the sequencer. Think of your body as a platform that someone else built. And your mind is a virus hacking into the program. The moment you allow the platform to take control and work the way it should, the more it's going to realize that you are an invader. You don't want the Programmer in you to take complete control. It will flush out the virus---if you do. It will flush YOU out."

I am trying to understand what he's saying but I just shrug, shaking my head. Right now wasn't the time for that. Surely.

"I'm sorry I saved your life."

"I didn't say I wasn't appreciative."

It was pointless to stay in the room with him. Perhaps I was taking things too personal with him. Perhaps I was too sensitive. It was hard to be when you find someone so attractive. It was hard to be this close to him.

Hours pass and he's out of the shower. I'm sitting up on the bed when he walks out. He sits on the bed.

"Do you think it was him?" Bronx asks, "Do you think it was your father who betrayed us."

"Perhaps," I grunt.

"If that's the truth, that would mean he's our enemy," he explains.

"What does that even mean?" I ask, "Him being our enemy. Would you hurt him, if need be?"

He pauses.

"I'm not sure. Would you?"

I shrug, "I'm not sure."

"It's going to send more Programmers after us," he states, "This was just the initial attack. We need to find the Mastersons. Aren't you friends with them?"

"I wouldn't say, friends...but I know them," I state.

"Good," he responds, "We can use this. We have to get in contact with the others..."

"They won't follow you," I assure him, "Did you see their faces? My father was the one who told us the Mastersons were really human. You still trust what my father says?"

" A true human may be the key to taking IT offline, for good. We don't have a choice. At least we'll know someone will survive then..."

"What are you saying?"

He pauses as though he's said something that he didn't expect me to react to. It's clear he must be losing a lot of blood or something. I don't think he would have said that in his right mind.

"I didn't mean to----"

"But you did," I interrupt him, "What do you mean it would be possible for someone to survive?"

He pauses.

"When a child is born, IT makes changes to that child. Children become cyborgs. They are taken offline. They are made part of the system. We become a part of IT."

"That's a good thing."

"But I need to let you know that if we are able to take IT offline, there is a possibility that we won't survive."

"You want to kill everyone----" I sigh.

I didn't know why it took me so long to understand. The look in his eyes was always different.
That's when he nods, "I'll take that chance. Freedom may come with a price. But even death is better than imprisonment."

"

 

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