CHAPTER THIRTEEN—Alpha Eve Labs

The engineering labs weren’t great for defense against an assault, but Kyle was glad there didn’t seem to be any easy ways into the area through large windows with access to the outer complex, like in Thalaway’s office.

Now that would have been bad. But that also meant that there would be no easy access to make an escape.

However there was an en exit corridor. “I’ll get this,” he said. He went to the door to double check if it was locked. It was. Then he thought better of that and opened in back up.

“What are you doing?” May asked as she glanced over her shoulder. She was setting up behind one of the solid work benches, her rifle propped up on the table.

Kyle saw that John was watching the entry door from behind another bench situated to the left of the door so that he could fire into the opening from an angle. It was a good flanking spot.

“There’s a door,” he called back to May, and ran down the corridor. Shoes slapping against the cold black tiles, he reached for the back door release and locked it.

The mechanism clicked audibly.

Wherever this leads, it’s probably got teams of Invera-Tech guarding now.

“Coming through,” John said over their wristlet coms. “Let’s give them hell.”

“You don’t have to tell me twice,” May said. “This time these douchebags are on our heels unprovoked—and I’m not going to let that stand!”

Kyle joined May back in the main room. “If we get flanked,” he said. “We’re screwed.”

“So, make sure we don’t get flanked.”

Kyle rolled his eyes and glanced back at the other chambers situated outside of the exit corridor. There were viewing panels with rounded corners separating those spaces from the main lab here. If the quick-response security teams broke through the back door, Kyle would get into one of those corridors and shoot any security guys coming down the hall.

With a nod, he said, “I got it covered.”

“Where’s Lexa?” John asked.

Kyle glanced toward the androids on the other end of the room. “Shouldn’t she be all jacked in by now?”

Those androids—though looking fully functional with skin and such, four of them were male designs, two of which had no skin, and the third was a female design that didn’t strike Kyle as particularly combat effective.

He glanced at May for an answer and she shrugged. “Maybe she’s wall hacking her ass past some bugs.”

What the hell? That sounds like—

Suddenly something broke through the door and a bright light appeared, followed by hissing sparks that few out and across the floor.

“They’re cutting through!” John said.

“We can see,” Kyle added, and glanced at John as he looked over toward Kyle and May.

*

A body was a body was a body.

…

Not true.

Not all bodies were equal for every task, and the same could be said for android bodies. Especially for android bodies, since they carried price tags—something humans did not yet have—at least as far as Lexa knew.

She had found a route outside of the network in the labs and was searching for an alternate means of body design. The ones on the rack were very much civilian models—though two had been security—they were both male and even had no skin!

She needed a body that would not be a hindrance to the others. And preferably not male in design.

Lexa tried to imagine herself parading about the penthouse in a male-like body. “Male-like” because they had no sex capabilities—as they were security androids.

With what passed for a machine sigh in cyberspace, Lexa carried on and found herself back inside of Thalaway’s computer systems.

She was intimately aware of someone in the system, but did not interact with the person in the slightest. It was probably Invera-Tech security.

She needed to watch out.

She burrowed into the files, perusing the Invera-Tech merchandising inventories and found access to some of the other peripheral networks. Bypassing the firewall was easy, but difficult if not impossible to describe to a human being without advanced knowledge in computer network security.

These labs were off limits to the public and had restricted access by most of the Invera-Tech employees due to their highly sensitive proprietary natures.

It was these android bodies she was most interested in.

As she scanned the network, she found places of interest to burrow into and found a weave of security systems hiding something.

Had she had eyes in cyberspace, she would have opened them wider.

She followed down a system of networks with high-security access. She weaved through them, her sentient AI capabilities bypassing this dead tech that could only react in ways of its masters’ designs. True adaptive capabilities were based on thought and creativity—not on algorithms.

She found herself inside of another computer network. This one was almost off the grid when considering how many layers of security were between here and the rest of the nexus.

Maybe she could dredge some information that could be useful to John and the others while she searched for a body.

She went into the system fully and started searching.

*

That bright bead travelled all the way around the door and then suddenly ceased, the sparks shutting off like water stopped from the sudden release of a spring-loaded nozzle.

John glanced toward the androids again, worried that they would get stuck here if Lexa didn’t arrive shortly.

All this to get her back, only to leave her here? That’s not going to happen.

“Get ready,” May said over their coms. The engineering lab wasn’t massively huge to the point where they couldn’t communicate freely, but with their open coms online, it allowed them to communicate more easily, as May’s words had been little more than a whisper across the from the room.

Making eye contact with her, she held her rifle perched atop the white-topped work bench, the bar of light just under the lip pulsing blue and white. John watched as she adjusted her grasp on the grip.

Kyle was positioned much the same way, but spaced out behind the work bench to May’s right. They have a good multi-vector attack angle.

“Charges,” May added. “Get ready.”

John glanced back toward the door just as it exploded forward, smoke and the vapor of expended charges blowing into the chamber.

He blinked reflexively.

May fired three shots through the new opening and stopped.

Suddenly something clattered about the floor. John wasted no time—he pulled himself off the bench and ducked. “Flash!”

It exploded and he lifted his sub-machine gun over the lip of the table and started firing before he could even get his face back behind the sights.

A barrage of thin super-heated lasers came out of his weapon and peppered the door as weapons fire burst forth from within.

John expended his entire battery right there.

If there were men near the edge, they had been hit, and if not, his shooting might distract their aim away from May and Kyle, who were behind cover directly ahead.

Even a bad aim could be lethal if it resulted into a purposeful accident.

Shots continued coming out of the door, screaming and sizzling through the open space. John slammed another battery into his sub-machine gun from the messy stack at his feet.

When a security guy came through the door, John opened up on him and he fell, but he thought May or Kyle had been the one to take him down.

Try harder!

*

May ducked down as lasers hit the work bench in front of her. It was lucky they were in these labs, otherwise the Invera-Tech security responders would have taken her out right through the furniture.

She had only squeezed off three shots, but she thought she hit one of her targets. Through the smoke and the haze, it was impossible to tell.

Kyle glanced at her while he was piling a reckless fusillade of hot energy across the lab. May scrunched in on herself instinctually from the snapping noise and the hot cracking of enemy fire behind the work bench she had her back to.

Kyle stopped shooting for a moment. “Fuck this—I can’t see shit!”

She chuckled.

“Somethin’ funny?” He set his repeater down and May heard the pin from his grenade tinkle across the tiles. He grunted when he tossed the explosive and an ear-cracking explosion echoed through the whole lab that she physically felt as it shook the flooring and the bench.

Debris and little bits of dust flew through the air.

“You think that did them in?” Kyle asked.

John laughed over the coms. “That would be too easy and you know it.”

May shook her head. “At least you’re having fun.”

“What?” Kyle asked. “And you’re not?”

*

By all accounts of her scans, the android body before her was hardly an android at all. It was more of a cybernetically enhanced super human clone—a lab-grown human—but still human.

A thrill passed through her.

Whatever that meant. As a machine in cyberspace, that thrill was more like… cognitive eagerness. But if she had this body, perhaps she would be able to feel physical thrills. The very idea filled her with…

Cognitive eagerness.

The body was powerful with machine augmented parts, tech ports and even carbon fiber bone enhancements. Most of the android was organic.

Very illegal.

By Lexa’s readings, she knew that the body was female—possessed battle-born qualities—and was for all intents and purposes, human.

It could not get better than this.

But Lexa needed to see it.

She hacked into the dark lab’s security systems and sent the camera feeds to her metaphorical control booth inside the system mainframe.

It flicked on and she had a view of the lab.

It was dark—the floors were filled with cold metal grates. There were lab stations and holo-monitors everywhere.

The tanks were in the center of the room.

Four of them.

Bodies in each one.

She had scanned and found that the other three models were male, and had lost interest in them right away, save for preliminary scans.

Her focus was on the motionless body in the second tank facing the east-side of the lab—which right now was empty for some reason.

Perhaps the technicians had been evacuated when the security threat became known. She proceeded through the restricted access, bypassing security clearance completely by gathering residual information signatures, reconstructing them and rerouting the administration access.

>: Welcome, Dr. Cho.

Lexa did not respond. The system thought she was Dr. Cho—head of the engineering science division in sector Alpha Eve.

Very original.

With inside access, Lexa did an internal scan of their systems to bring up more information on the android Lexa was interested in.

The file shocked her.

Not the information itself. There was a lot of peripheral information regarding proprietary sciences, human anatomy and firmware.

It was the name of the android that had taken her aback.

Had Lexa been able to gasp—she would have.

Tank 03 - Android: Lexa-EACF-Alpha-2.945-6.36

Current Status: Dormant

State: Ready for Alpha Test Insertion

Status of Digitized Consciousness: N/A

Why would this body bear the same name as her?

Unless…

No, she had no time to think about this.

I need to help the others.

She accessed the systems further, searching for the empty port where the digitized consciousness would have to dock before being inserted into the body.

She scanned the hardware, the firmware and the specifications. Lexa dredged up the user manuals. They consisted various digital documents equaling to no less than 4,396 pages. She scanned through them in no more than 0.19 seconds.

From the manuals—she would not be able to insert herself into the android body. Not without human assistance. More specifically—mage assistance, as magic was necessary for the entire process.

An access key was green lit at the door and Lexa flicked back to the cameras as a man with canted eyes and short hair stepped into the lab.

“Welcome, Administrator Cho,” a voice said over the intercoms. It was feminine, sterile in tone.

Administrator Cho… She dredged his personnel files and cross referenced his skills, both in the sciences and in magical aptitude with the requirements listed in the labs’ proprietary documentation.

He was a match.

Cho had the necessary skills and magical capabilities to perform the insertion operation!

She wasted no time. Lexa activated the system commands, forcing the doors to lock tight with a hard snap.