Chapter 3 Factory Reset

Rosie only remembered flashes of the last few days. A split second of agony, followed by the surreal image of light shining through a hole in her foot. Then came the burning of deep, painful, stim injections in her arm, and people laughing about the radio playing in the room.

She tried to sit up, finding her arm strapped to the simple canvas bed in an old communal shower room. Recently cleaned, light reflecting from the faded green tile. “Where am I?”

“It’s alright Rosie, you’re safe. Try not to move, I’m running out of sutures.” She half recognised the woman. Short brown hair, skin pale like her own. Currently squeezing a rubber ball, filling an iv bag with her own blood, no doubt not the first. “You’ve been in and out for a few days, but you’re in pretty good shape, considering. Are you in pain right now?”

“No…I feel ok.” Rosie got the sense from the expression on her saviour’s face that sounded odd. “Listen, I need to move my arm.” Rosie started to shift under the coarse blankets. Desperate to get some kind of information she could trust.

“Don’t even think about it.” The woman still dressed in back gently laid her back down. “You were doing that for hours, you need to let it heal. Here, best I can do.” She slipped a shiny mirror into Rosie’s strapped down hand. “What do I press?”

Rosie spent the next hour guiding Charlie through the pipboy, struggling to give reversed commands. Something had shifted radically inside the jet black device she’d thought she knew so well. New notifications under headers Rosie dismissed as corrupted by the idiots in charge years ago. Unsurprisingly her doctor scrolled straight to the enhanced medical pages. Showing Rosie details on traumas she couldn’t feel. A person outline with red over her left foot and arm, blood pressure, hydration, rads.

Next Rosie checked her scan for John, no sign, and the map screen blank till an improved pulse filled it in. Looking at the screen in the mirror, only being able to move as fast as Charlie’s tired hands just frustrated her. So much in fact that a notification informed her doctor of an increase in blood pressure. Prompting her to take the mirror away without a hint of compromise

Charlie told her a few details. They’d been sent to get Andrea, who was safe, along with the other captives. Rosie tried to feign concern, she didn’t want to think about any of that. She thought about asking to leave, but could barely make it to the bucket in the corner unaided, and still had the woman’s blood flowing into her veins.

“How’s the patient?” Rosie half recognised the broad chested, bearded man that carried her. Although he didn’t draw her focus. The smell coming from the steaming bowls he carried cut through the hint of bleach in the air. “This’ll fix you right up, tato soup and fresh roll.” Rosie returned the good natured smile as Charlie helped her sit up, supporting her arm and strapping it back in place.

“Thank you…” Rosie couldn’t remember his name.

“Paul, and you’re welcome.”

“I’d try it first before you thank him.” Charlie grinned as she held the bowl out for Rosie.

“Ignore her, she’s just jealous.” Rosie saw how close they were.

Carefully, so as not to spill the piping hot soup and add burns to the already long list of injuries, Rosie brought the wooden spoon to her still cracked lips. The thick, rich orange liquid tasted fresh, vibrant, packed with flavours that changed in between mouthfuls. Charlie tore the brown orb in half, revealing the fluffy texture within, she soaked half in the bowl and ate it. Rosie copied her without trying to look as if she was.

“What is this stuff?” Rosie mumbled as the soup soaked food melted in her mouth.

“Bread?” The confusion on their faces told Rosie that she asked a dumb question, not something common for her.

After three more bowls of soup, much to Paul’s delight, and two more rolls Charlie left to get some well earned sleep. Not before telling Rosie to do the same, and Paul took up watch.

A man she didn’t recognise joined her, Matt, a thin man with an awkward manner. They made small talk, hardly Rosie’s strong suit at the best of times. And something Rosie guessed she had in common with the blonde man who couldn’t meet her gaze as he hesitantly made conversation about Paul’s cooking. None of which meant anything to the woman who’d just eaten her first real bowl of soup, instead of watered down protein bars.

Matt left for a moment and returned with a handful of guns, laying them out on a grey blanket. Rosie hadn’t seen any kind of firearm before leaving the Vault. Yet as she watched the blonde haired man strip, clean, then reassemble the weapons details filled her mind.

Bolt action sniper rifles, assault carbines, and submachine guns. The information just popped into her head. She reasoned her time in the repair shop could explain the knowledge of how the weapons went together. They were little more than springs and rods. But the thoughts of cyclic rates, muzzle velocities, and calibres felt unearned.

It had to be the jet black device, and it meant that the display inside her eyes was the least of the secrets revealed to her. Rosie had to know, and this time she knew her latest bright idea was going to be painful.

Matt busied himself with an entirely routine task, paying little attention to her as she slowly unstrapped her left arm. Even that hurt. She had to bunch up the coarse blanket and bite down on it to keep from yelping. With one last deep inhale, Rosie heaved her lacerated arm onto her chest. Feeling at least one of the precise stitches pop and a cold trickle run from the bone deep wound.

“You ok?” Matt turned, hearing her let out a sharp breath.

“I’m fine.” Rosie lied, and spoke more harshly than she meant to. Matt’s clean shaven face became awkward, seeing Rosie had undone her own straps. “Look…my boyfriend’s out here, I don’t know where he is. I think I can find him, he’s wearing one of these too.” A half truth is better than a lie, Rosie thought, wondering how John would react to the secrets his device held. He certainly wouldn’t do what she had in mind, he’d probably try to ignore it.

A memory of frustration brought a picture of his sullen face with it, and a deep pang of loneliness unlike anything she’d felt before. This was the longest they had gone without seeing each other for their entire lives.

“John, right?” Rosie saw Matt get even more awkward as he deflated the rapid hope that built in her. “You were calling for him in your sleep.” For a moment Rosie thought he was going to get Charlie, but he turned as he reached the door. “Make it quick, Charlie won’t like it but I get it. Listen, I’m sure he’s…we’ll find him. That’s what we do, find things.” Matt smiled warmly and puffed out his chest in mocking bravado. “And occasionally save pig headed ladies in blue suits.” Rosie didn’t know what pig headed meant, yet it didn’t feel like an insult. More like a sense of recognition. Whoever these people were, they'd gone to great lengths to keep her safe. Rosie wanted to believe it had been an act of mercy. She couldn’t.

After an adjustment to the hanging iv bag, Rosie finally had access to the device she thought she knew down to the last digit of code. The new notifications led her to improved versions of the existing systems and blank pages about briefings. A locator system that showed no matches and a long list of failed uplink attempts.

Rosie knew the device well enough to see the lag she’d gotten used to had gone, the screens moved as fast as her nimble fingers. More processing power, she thought, before diving into the read only mode and viewing the scrolling code in action.

On the surface the Vault installed Unified os garbage still ran, yet underneath something had come to life. The void of corrupted data morphed into complex subroutines and algorithms even she couldn’t understand. Multiple code systems coexisting, altered to mesh together. Each strengthening the other’s weakness and controlled by an elegant system of commands. All of it bearing the same signature, B.B.

Rosie paused in awe of the genius that wrote this code. Quickly followed by a sense of bitter contempt that she never had the chance to even learn how to understand such beauty. Never mind the resources to create it.

For all the brilliance of the newly discovered code, it had still been restrained. Like trying to force a reservoir into a water can, the Unified os simply couldn’t handle the level of input. The potential held back by an impassable barrier of crude construction. The girl that had nightmares about killer robots for years suddenly felt compassion and kinship with something that seemed almost aware.

Rosie’s quick mind came up with an idea, and didn’t take the time to think about the consequences. Buried at the bottom of her hack folder, Rosie found her emergency evidence deletion hack, a3omb.

She’d only used it a few times. In the early days of breaching Vault systems, crashing the full program to hide her digital footprints. This would crash the Unified os in under a minute flat. Leaving the crude subroutines unable to stand against the code beneath. Feeling something she couldn’t quite place Rosie set the hack running, then remembered the sense of excitement she’d missed.

Junk data began to generate at an exponential rate. Masses of work orders that went nowhere. Search requests for corrupted data, thousands of calculations with unending results. Rosie began to smile as the garbage system forced on the device, forced on them both, crumbled under her design. Then the screen went blank and Rosie’s new reality became nothing but pain.

Every nerve in her body screamed as if skewered by microscopic needles. She could feel her bones scraping against muscle. Her skull felt like it contracted. Rosie thrashed and convulsed on the simple canvas bed, tearing iv’s and stitches alike, spilling transfused blood onto the tile.

“CHARLIE!” Seconds after Matt’s panicked yell Charlie burst through the doorway, her training taking over.

“Hold her legs!” Matt’s weight on her legs only made the all encompassing, total agony worse, somehow. “Rosie, tell me where it hurts!” She tried to speak, to beg Charlie to shoot her in the head. To end the electric burning from within but only an anguished cry escaped. Right before Charlie stuffed a roll of bandages in her mouth to keep her from biting off her own tongue.