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The SubVersion Complex, Chapter Thirteen (Revised)

Again, as with the new Chapter 12, this is the revised version of Chapter 13. Small but significant changes, which will lead into a much-changed Chapter 14.

Here is the new Chapter 13 of The SubVersion Complex. This book is intended for a more mature audience, so be advised.

╗ THIRTEEN ╚

DANIEL MARCUS

There had been no time to cry out in pain, no time to do anything other than simply collapse to her knees as her attacker held her securely from behind. The intruder's grunted warning into Anna's ear was entirely unnecessary; her brain was shocked and frozen in time and she felt she would have done anything he wanted had he merely expressed the desire.

The man behind her wasted no time. “Good. Get up.” He hauled her firmly to her feet, still pinning her twisted arm behind her back. She complied without a thought or a sound, and watched through a dazed semi-consciousness as he snatched her gun from the floor with his free hand. They both made their awkward way to her living room and the man pushed her to a sitting position on the sofa.

“You will sit quietly and listen, and I will talk,” he said as he began to strip her gun down to its component parts. She watched as frame, slide, barrel, magazine, and spring came apart, and he pitched each piece unceremoniously to various corners of the room. The speed and efficiency of the act startled her, and she became even more alarmed when he did not pitch the barrel but instead kept it in his hand.

She had recovered enough to look at his face and was shocked to realize that it was the same man that had picked her up off the ground at the doctor's office. He stood even taller than she remembered, dressed entirely in black combat gear with his own firearm strapped firmly to his waist and various gear clipped to his belt. She had not seen his eyes at their first encounter due to his sunglasses, but now they were plainly visible: gray, piercing eyes glowing with a hunted fierceness, frightening in their intensity and danger.

Pain suddenly began to rage through her arm and her knees, and she moaned as her various limbs began to stab and ache. “You hurt me,” she mumbled almost incoherently.

The man didn't even glance up. “You'll live,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone. “We have more important things to talk about. You are going to do something for me.” He pulled open a pocket on his harness and began to fish inside it for something. “You have top security clearance at Central Admin and a wicked way with computers, and you are going to use both.”

Anna's brain began roiling with obvious questions. “How did you get into my house?” she stammered, disregarding his request. “I set my alarm, I locked the door . . . “

The man did not respond until he had found what was in his pocket, a small scrap of paper with writing scrawled on one side. “I used an access card, same as you would have when you get home at night.”

“But- but I didn't give you my access card!” she blurted out stupidly. “And you didn't steal it, I still have it.”

“I stole it after a fashion,” the man replied. “One doesn't have to take an access card to make it work. I copied it.”

“When?” Anna asked, bewildered.

“At the doctor's office. I was close to you long enough to copy it wirelessly. You really ought to secure your house better against intrusion if you don't want things like your code slicer stolen.”

Panic quickly rose into Anna's throat and threatened to suffocate her. How in the world did her know about her code slicer? How in the world was he standing right here right now? How in the world . . . Then an insane thought took shape in her muddled head. “Who are you?” she whispered, although she was almost certain she already knew the answer. Her suspicions were confirmed when he looked her dead in the eyes and spoke again.

“I am Daniel Marcus, and I know you already know that name. I'm not sure what you've been told about me and who I am, but I am really not in the mood for correcting back story that they may have gotten wrong.” He grasped one of her wrists and planted the crumpled paper he held into her own palm. “I need you to research these for me.”

Anna blinked incredulously at him for several moments before her eyes fell to the paper in her hand. She unfolded it and stared, then held it closer and stared longer with growing confusion. Its only contents were two sets of letters and numbers: SVC1001-1FX and SVC5403-1F. She looked back up at Daniel. “I have no idea what these are.”

“Each one is a serial number in your database,” Daniel replied.

Anna shook her head. “That doesn't help me at all,” she faltered. “I don't even know which database to begin looking in. How am I supposed to look them up when I don't know that? I don't even have clearance to all of the databases in the building anyways.”

Daniel smiled at her, a cold and precarious expression. “Do you think I'm that stupid? I know you know of other ways of getting into secure databases than simply waltzing in through the front-end access point.” He cocked his head at her. “It's called 'breaking in.'”

Anna gritted her teeth, her consternation rapidly growing. “Which is a crime, in case you didn't know.“

“Do I look like I care?”

In desperation Anna tried again. “What are these numbers even for? What do they mean?”

Daniel leaned against the nearest wall whilst keeping his eyes firmly affixed to his victim. Anna could hear his breathing become more labored, with sadness or anger she couldn't tell but she guessed some great emotional storm raged inside the man. Finally he crossed his arms and drew breath.

“The SVC stands for 'SubVersion Complex,' the middle numerals are the lot number, and the F stands for Female.” Daniel struggled with the words. “The 1 before it signifies that the female in question has no twin.”

Anna could hardly believe what she was hearing. In fact, it sounded so silly, especially coming out of such a serious man's mouth that despite her discomfiture she could barely contain a hysterical laugh. “Subversion Complex? As in, the Subversion Complex of urban legend? You cannot be serious! You are either a conspiracy theorist of the highest order or you are insane!”

Daniel lunged away from the wall and dropped to his knees in front of her so quickly that she nearly shrieked. She pulled her feet up onto the sofa and shielded her face from his eyes, which now burned only inches from her own. He had his hands on both sides of her, balled into fists and grinding into the cushions while his face floated so close to her own that she could feel the heat of his quiet fury. “I am neither, Anna” he growled, his voice shaking. “Some have speculated about the SubVersion Complex, others have fought to find out if it exists. It does indeed exist, and I know because I have seen a part of it. So do not ever give me grief over conspiracy theories and urban legends ever again. Do I make myself perfectly clear?”

Anna's hands and breathing shook as she nodded desperately. The immediacy of his tone had somehow managed to obliterate her doubt, at least for the moment. Daniel remained uncomfortably close to her, though, and appeared to have little intention of moving any time soon.

“You are looking for two females, and I need to know the status and location of both of them as soon as is practicable for you to get the info to me.”

“You keep saying females,” Anna asked, still cringing away from him. “Female what?”

“Female humans, Anna. Try to keep up.”

“Female humans? But what- what is the Subversion Complex?” Anna persisted. Her confusion grew ever stronger, and even her memories of the urban legends failed her in the details. The Subversion Complex had always appeared in the conspiracy theories as some horrific underground prison, or something of that sort, a subterranean labyrinth that housed some awful secret. However, there had never been any proof of it, and most of the public, including her, disbelieved and even laughed at the notion.

And now Daniel Marcus claimed he had been there.

Daniel tore himself away from the sofa and stood again, and Anna could immediately tell she was not going to get much more from him. His eyes still fixed on her face, he breathed unevenly and worked his jaw. “You will break into Central Admin's server system and find the files relevant to both serial numbers, and you will find out the status of these two females for me. It would be an understatement to say that they are dear to me; they are my life. You will do this for me, and you will report back with your findings.”

One of Anna's conversations with Dr. Jarrod flashed back into her mind and she remembered he had said Daniel had gotten tangled up with some woman at Central Admin. Perhaps this was her. She looked up at Daniel and all of a sudden she realized she despised this man, as fearsome as he was. Central Admin and the Secretary carried enough weight between them to squash one man like Daniel. She couldn't recall what had made him seem attractive to her before.

She stared at him with all the defiance she could muster and crossed her arms across her chest. “And what happens if I refuse to do all of this? I could report you, show the Party Secretary the numbers on your list, have you hunted down like the criminal you are. What is to stop me? Are you going to kill me?”

For the second time a smile split Daniel's face. “No, I am not going to kill you. But I'll gladly let you hang yourself if that's your fancy.”

Anna's blood ran cold. “What do you mean?”

“I have ways of ensuring that you will get this done for me. Like the highly incriminating data package that my compatriots have ready to drop on your comfortable little life if you choose to ignore me. It has just about every kind of damning evidence we could invent linking you with the Verité group, and believe you me, I am not afraid to use all of it against you if you betray me.”

Anna began to shake again. Along with the abject fear pulsing through her veins, her body had begun to crash after all that wine and she found it increasingly difficult to concentrate properly. “How am I supposed to break into a secure server and not get caught?”

Daniel shook his head. “For a confident career woman, you show a serious lack of confidence in yourself.” From the same pocket that the paper had emerged from now came another object, this one small and round and shiny. Daniel held it up so that she was sure to see. Anna realized with horror that it was her borrowed code slicer, the slicer that was supposed to be nestled comfortably inside her safe upstairs. Her stomach fell away completely.

“How did you get that?” she gasped.

Daniel looked askance at her. “You have a biometric lock on that safe, Anna, and your fingerprints are all over this house. Don't insult me.” He held it just out of her reach. “As I understand, this slicer needs to go back to HomoGen pretty soon. A couple weeks, perhaps? And then they will begin to demand it of you. I hope you are privy to the fact that this device is worth more than your entire property.” He held it out closer to her. “You will need this, and you will need to find my files with it before this goes back to its owners.”

Anna slowly took the device. “And how am I supposed to get in touch with you anyways when I'm done? I don't know, you're liable to disappear and never come back!”

Daniel pulled a small commex handset from his belt and tossed it onto the sofa next to her. “You will use this,” he said. “I know you are a computer tech and that your first thought will be to hack this device and discover my location, but rest assured we've already taken that into consideration. If you take it apart it will signal me and then destroy itself. If you attempt to bring it into Central Admin the guards will scan your vehicle and yourself and they will detect its broadcast chip even if it's turned off. If you tamper with the code inside at all it will alert me. So don't try anything, it would only be a waste of both of our time.”

He looked at her one last time. “I don't want to do this, I wish there was another way, but there is no other way I know of. Play along and everything will be fine. Don't play along, and I and my allies will rain hellfire down on you.”

“Your allies?”

“Yes, if again you had not already guessed. They are Verité, and so am I.” He turned to leave, then paused briefly by the entrance to the kitchen. He held up his hand, and Anna saw the barrel of her gun shining between his fingers. “You know, it would take a professional only a couple seconds to reassemble this weapon under ideal circumstances. Your weapon is a bit more . . . scattered. I'll tell you what, since you fancy yourself handy with a gun, I will give you this-” he indicated the barrel “-and we will see how quickly you can reassemble and get off a shot at me. Oh, and by the way, I've been told the head of IT over at Central Admin is lonely, and a man. That might be a good opening for a server break-in. Farewell.”

With that, he tossed her the barrel and disappeared into the kitchen. Anna sat for a moment, still stunned, then dove for the floor and scrabbled for the remaining pieces of her firearm, snapping and clicking it all back together as quickly as her training allowed. Her nerves were so jangled, however, that her fingers fumbled the job and it took her several minutes to accomplish. When it was finally assembled again she raced through the kitchen to the back door, but she knew it was a horribly lost cause. Daniel Marcus was long gone, and she was trapped.

She stumbled back into the living room overwhelmed with exhaustion and anger and fear. After stripping the magazine from her gun she threw both items onto the coffee table, then threw herself onto the sofa and began to cry. Her body trembled with wrenching violent sobs for a long time before she drifted fitfully off to sleep.

The SubVersion Complex, Chapter Twelve (Revised)

I apologize for being away for quite a while. I moved into a new home, had some family accident troubles to attend to, and some soul-searching that needed completion. But those things are all done.

Based on comments by readers and a good long look at some previous material, I decided that a bit of significant rewriting was in order. Several significant errors had accumulated, mostly having to do with how top-secret databasing systems actually work and the kind of access someone like Anna would actually have. I also realized that we needed a good hard look at Anna's true programming expertise, as this will play a huge role later on in the book and we want to see her in action.

I will be reposting chapters until we're caught back up to where we were originally. This first reposted chapter and the next one might not seem much different than they were originally but the changes will rapidly become more significant. Also, the chapter numbering will be different because I added another chapter near the beginning that I will not be posting here at all, but that you'll see in the final copy of the book (maybe).

So without further ado, here is the revised version of Chapter 12 of The SubVersion Complex. This book is intended for a more mature audience, so be advised.

╗ TWELVE ╚

THE THEORY

It was late, and Sam fumed.

He approached the Secretary's office door and ground his teeth behind closed lips as the security officers posted outside took his firearm and scanned him. They irked him, the Secretary's personal security. It felt like a breach of trust that he, Security Chief Holloway, was not their commander as well. When the officers were satisfied, he pushed roughly past them and rapped hard on the wood. The lock clicked and he burst through.

“And let yourself in, my door is open,” Adam remarked with faux pleasantness. His feet were propped up on his desk and his commex was clutched in his hand. Fumes from his electronic cigarette spiraled around his head in fantastic swirls and shapes. He reluctantly pulled himself forward to face Sam. “What is it?”

Sam pulled out one of the chairs in front of the Secretary's desk and sat down heavily. The chair protested with a loud squeak. “I think you know very well why I am here,” he rumbled.

“I might, but do elaborate. Seeing as how you are so very good at elaborating,” the Secretary sighed.

“Well, to start, your 'Praetorian Guard' outside seem extra obnoxious lately.”

A wide smile spread across the Secretary's face. “Ah. Then it would seem that you know your ancient history. So few people do nowadays.”

Sam snorted. “You mean do I know how the Praetorian Guard eventually turned on the emperor that they were sworn to protect? Then yes, I do.”

“A necessary risk in this business,” Adam replied levelly. “Let's just call it a division of power.” He stood slowly, leaning forward towards Sam with his hands on his desk. “A division at which you will continually chafe, and that I will continually enforce. This emperor will have his Praetorian Guard and you will be content with your place. So let's leave all that aside for the moment and come to the real point of your intrusion.”

The pose and tone were threatening enough to make even Sam recoil ever so slightly in his chair. He would not be cowed for long, though, and he shifted closer to the desk. “I'm here to talk about Miss McLean.”

Adam smiled again. “Ah yes, Miss McLean. Isn't she something?” he said. “Young, vibrant, sexy, very intelligent, and with a great appreciation for my fine wines.” A strange protective sort of sarcasm dripped in his voice. “Really, Sam, you ought to get yourself a woman like that. Or should I say, another woman like that? This one's not a blonde at least.”

Sam squirmed. “I'll make a note of it . . . “

“Please do, and please also remember your place in regards to the aforementioned woman. Now,” Adam said, turning to the window and gazing down at the nighttime cityscape below, “what about Miss McLean?”

Sam remembered his purpose and his anger returned. “I was told by the mobile security division downstairs that you took Miss McLean to the Version Ghetto.”

“They told you that, did they?”

“Yes they did. And they also told me that an auto-tank opened fire while the two of you were right there. And that she was witness to a massacre.” Sam opened his hands with an incredulous gesture. “Is this true? Please tell me that it's not true.”

The Secretary regarded the large man with curiosity for a long moment before replying. “What if it is or isn't? What is that to you?”

“If I was to put myself in the shoes of an outsider,” Sam replied with rising ire, “and given you a completely objective assessment of your actions, I would have said that you were certifiably insane and had no business going any farther with this demented plan.”

Adam cocked his head. “But I don't pay you to put yourself in other people's shoes, especially outsiders,” he said. “What I pay you for and demand accordingly is a subjective voice of force. The hound dog doesn't question the master's intent, he merely does his duty under the assumption that his human has a plan. And right now, the hound is not trusting but resisting.”

Sam scowled. “Except that this hound is human. And he wonders if his human betters actually have that plan in mind when they do things like parade street violence in front of a woman. Where indeed is the sense in that?”

Adam stood silent for a long time, the vapors from his cigarette curling around his motionless hand. “There is a time and a place for everything, Sam, even the truth. The entire sugar-free, violent and ugly truth. She refused to accept that what I had said was true, and so I decided to show her instead. A dice roll of sorts. There is a delicate balance, between telling her what she needs to hear and showing her that which will motivate action.”

“Motivate what action?” Sam asked incredulously. “Driving her away? Sending her packing into the arms of a group like Verité? They prey on people who know the truth, as you must be well aware. When that occurs it becomes a security issue, and when it becomes a security issue it becomes my issue.”

“Correct as usual,” Adam said with a nod, clapping with slow derision. “But I am focused on the larger picture here. She will come, wait and see.”

“And that leads me to my other questions,” Sam continued as if the Secretary had never spoken, “which are these: why have we given her a firearm and a top-level access key? We hadn't discussed those either but I let them slide. That was before. Now I am concerned that she will be like a child who has discovered a lighter for the first time.”

Adam scratched his chin. “Your point?”

“My point?” Sam's face grew red. “My point is that you're creating a dangerous situation that you will lose control of more quickly than you think possible. She will be a danger to herself and could become a liability to this entire administration.” He clenched his fists in his lap as he spoke and his breathing grew loud. “In short, with all due respect Mr. Secretary, I believe you are making a terrible mistake, and you are not helping me at all.”

It was a long moment before either man moved. Adam still stood between the desk and window with a serious expression on his face; the sarcasm was gone and he stared hard at Sam. Inexplicable thoughts churned behind his green eyes and his jaw worked back and forth. Finally he creaked back over to the desk and settled slowly back into his chair, his eyes fixed on his chief of security and his face a mask.

“Perhaps I may offer a critique?” he began.

Sam frowned. “By all means,” he allowed reluctantly.

“You may be looking at this whole project from the wrong angle,” the Secretary said. “Where you see danger, I see opportunity. Where you see a threat, I see hope.” He rubbed his palms together. “Have you ever tried to feed a chickadee from your hand, Sam?”

Confused, Sam shook his head. “I can't say that I have,” he grunted.

“It's a very small bird, but very innocent and in many ways quite fearless. Despite that, you still must work to earn its trust. It is a cautious creature.”

Sam waved his hand, impatient with the analogy. “Okay, fine, I get it.”

“Do you?” Adam queried. “To lure in the chickadee you must be very still and very very patient. You must bide your time and tempt it in slowly. It will only come to you in stages, and only if each stage has a reward or other proper motivator.”

“Get to the damn point.”

“The point is this: Annalise McLean is the one I want. She is the key piece to my puzzle, and I need her to accept all of this. However, I gain nothing by making her do anything, she must want to do it. In short, she must desire to come to me and must be passionate and complete in that desire.” Adam tapped the head of his cane with his fingers. “I have set the bait, I have put out the seed, and she must be the one to bite. I sent you to offer her a job that we both knew she craved and would never refuse. She accepted. I gave her a gun and just enough training with it to make her dangerous. I gave her a security access level high enough to make her curious. I gave her a free enough rein to feel that she was not under twenty-four-hour surveillance and could do and say what she wanted. And I put her with Dr. Jarrod who can give her just enough information for me to build upon later.”

He rose to his feet again and continued. “I am drawing her in, Sam, and I am well aware of how unorthodox my methods may appear to you. But as I said, patience is the key. Each step must be either a reward or a motivator. I have rewarded and rewarded, and now tonight I showed her the motivator, as horrible as it may seem. If I have cemented in her mind the belief that our goal is noble and that we must work to avert another such awful encounter together, then I have succeeded. As far as I know, she now thinks everything I have told her is the truth.”

“Then I presume you fed her the same standard line about Verité and her parents?” Sam asked sardonically. “And you talk about telling her the whole truth.”

Adam's face darkened. “There is the truth, and then there is the truth,” he growled. “Do not test me.”

Sam shoved himself up out of his seat. “Regardless of what you decide to do, those are my reservations and I thought you should hear them. I realize she will need to be shown . . . things. But she is a woman.”

“So was her mother,” the Secretary said. “If you are implying that Miss McLean can't handle the heat in the proverbial political kitchen then I submit that you are a sexist ass. Her mother was the strongest person I know and I see a great deal of the mother in the daughter. I think we will be fine.”

“Very well,” Sam said, peeved and unsatisfied. “But I will be keeping my eyes open.”

“You know?” Adam suddenly smiled. “That is indeed the difference between you and her. I want a technocrat as my successor, an objective fixer and pragmatist, someone without ambition or visions of expansionist grandeur. You are ambitious, she is not.”

Sam's face reddened and he stiffened. “Is that all?” he grunted.

Adam, a smile still stretched across his face, gestured to the door. “That is all. Have a good night, Officer Holloway, and remember: this is all a game. A serious game to be sure, but a game with pieces and moves and counter-moves and winners and losers. Right now I'd rather I was not obstructed whilst I attempt to win this round.”

Sam quickly crossed the space to the door, but he stopped once he reached it and turned partway. “When will you tell her about the Complex? If you ever do at all, which it would seem likely you will at this point.”

Adam looked back to the window in thought. “The time will come. Patience is the key. The chickadee must be pecking seed right out of my hand before I spring that one. But I will make it work.” His tone suddenly went cold. “Good night, Mr. Holloway, and don't forget to lock up when you leave tonight.”

Sam slid out and the door clicked shut. The Secretary fell into his chair and heaved an enormous sigh, then tapped an icon on his commex screen. A picture of a woman with reddish hair appeared. Adam stared at her face for a long time until his own expression softened. He touched the screen.

“Well, Mrs. McLean, lets hope your daughter is less stubborn than you were,” he whispered. “We both know how that turned out . . . “

The SubVersion Complex, Chapter Fourteen

What's in the black box?? Here is the next chapter of The SubVersion Complex. Hope you all enjoy! If you missed Chapter Thirteen, click here. And stay tuned for the next three chapters or so, in which much of the big terrible secret is revealed.


This book is intended for a more mature audience, so be advised.

╗ FOURTEEN ╚

THE TRANSFER PROTOCOL

For the next hour Anna's spirit raged inside her as she waited in agony for the reactive computer to finish the scan. As the doctor had waved and left she was struck by the terrifying realization that she would be alone in the room with the computer.

Left alone with that . . . thing.

Thing, girl, monstrous creature, whatever it was. If indeed that was what was in the box, but Anna somehow had no doubt in her mind that the box did contain what she feared it did. There was no other place for the girl to hide in the lab, unless . . . she was in more than one piece. Anna shuddered at the thought and desperately thrust that possibility out of her mind. She would go with her first assumption for now.

There was nothing to do but wait for the scan to complete. Anna found she couldn't get comfortable in any position, whether sitting or standing or pacing around. The whole awful concept burned in her mind like nothing ever had before. At one point she turned toward the computer and the desperate thought occurred to her that she could pop the box open and confirm her suspicions once and for all, but she recoiled just as quickly and decided against it.

Her mind churned for answers but none came. Only questions bubbled to the surface. The most immediate one of course was whether Dr. Jarrod knew what he was working on. Had someone else built the reactive computer or had he been intimately involved in its construction? How much did he know? Perhaps he knew quite well what he was doing.

She felt her stomach growing sick again at the thought of the girl. What had they done to her? Why had they done it? What parent in their right mind would allow such a thing to happen to their child? Did she have any parents? And worst of all, why had she been trapped inside the SubVersion Complex for what looked like years before being shipped here to be used as part of an experiment? Which led back to her original question . . .

What was the SubVersion Complex?

She shuddered again and put it out of her head for the moment. There were bigger and more immediate problems at hand. She turned to the main display on the computer and with a shock realized that the scan had completed. The scan is completed. Theoretically that means that I can talk to the brain inside. The brain inside . . .

She stared at the display for a long time without moving. The brain wave pattern readout undulated in regular patterns like it always had, but now next to it there blinked an input window. Anna realized that the algorithm was working and that the computer sat ready to finally do what it had been designed to do. She fell into the chair in front of the keyboard but still hesitated. Equal parts curiosity and revulsion mixed inside her as she considered trying it out.

With a sudden burst of either desperation or confidence she typed the opening command. The electronic side of the computer would be running standard QX code, but if the algorithm was indeed working it would translate whatever code she typed into the appropriate brain wave impulses on the other side. Once the opening command was typed in she struck Enter.

The brain wave pattern immediately contorted and stuttered, and Anna recoiled as she began to see the patterns speed up and pulsate. She looked back to her input display and her heart raced. Underneath it was a window labeled “Output” and text began to fill it in. It was one sentence long.

'Please stop you're hurting me.'

Anna froze. Could it even be possible? Or was it a trick of the code? She went back to her input window and typed 'I don't want to hurt you.' Perhaps it was not real.

A pause, then more text appeared. 'It makes my head hurt make it stop.'

Anna's heart pounded. She was talking to the girl in the box. In a fevered daze she typed 'Who are you?' She waited for a moment, and sure enough more text appeared.

'I'm Sonya and I'm trapped get me out I want to get out where's my mommy I want my mommy.'

The girl had a mother. Her name was Sonya. And she was in pain. Suddenly the humanity of the girl inside the computer struck Anna in a wave and she sat back in her chair, stunned. Her eyes filled with tears; she almost didn't know why. She reached for the keyboard again. 'I don't know where your mother is, I'm so sorry.'

A long silent moment passed before anything appeared again on the screen. Then a short burst of text: 'Please get me out it's so dark I'm scared.'

A tear ran down Anna's check and fell onto the keyboard. She sat motionless, unsure of what to tell this poor creature. Her hands trembled with an emotion she could barely understand, a surge of protectiveness and a feeling bordering on attachment. She was about to type again when the output window filled with more text.

'What's your name?'

For some reason the question caught her completely off-guard. She bit her lip, then typed 'My name is Anna.' Then she added, 'I wish I could get you out of there, I wish I could find your mommy for you.' She had never really spoken to or interacted with many children before so she felt suddenly awkward speaking to one even through the stilted interface of the computer.

No response appeared on the screen. Anna waited for what seemed an age but still no answer. Fearful that somehow she was losing her subject's attention, she wracked her brain for something to say. Then something occurred to her, but she found herself wincing as she typed it: 'I lost my mommy too.'

Sure enough a reply was not long in coming. 'Oh do you have the same mommy as me?'

Anna found herself smiling grimly at the suggestion, and another tear trickled to the end of her nose. She realized that she liked this girl. She began to type again when another message from Sonya appeared. 'I like your name Anna it's pretty.'

Anna stopped typing her own message and sat still, listening to herself breathe and the computer hum. The situation was surreal. The biggest dream of her life, the reactive computer, sat in front of her and all she could do with it was have a conversation with the brain inside. The mind inside. The entire experience was completely unlike what she had ever fantasized about it.

She typed 'I've always liked my name. I like yours too.'

An idea occurred to her, and she leaned to one side so she could see the black box a little better. The lid was secured to the rest of the box with hinges on the long side and a trio of latches on the other. However, there were also screws pinning the lid closed all around its perimeter, securing it shut.

What would happen if I opened the box?

She knew she had roundly rejected doing so earlier, but now that she was certain of what was inside, somehow it didn't seem half as crazy. Except she had no idea of Sonya's condition, how she was hooked up to the computer, what sort of physical state she was in. Anna sat undecided for what felt like an eternity, her fear and her morbid curiosity battling for dominance.

She glanced at the monitor and saw another message from Sonya. 'My head hurts Anna make it stop.'

That settled things in Anna's mind. Without another contrary thought she hopped off the chair and pulled the rolling toolbox over to the computer. Selecting the appropriate torque driver, she gingerly pushed aside the masses of cabling and tubing that snaked to and from the black box and began working on the first screw. They were tightly secured and Anna had some trouble, but ten minutes and two sore hands later she had removed every last one. She snapped the wing latches open first, then reached for the main one, but again stopped in fear.

Why was she doing this? Suddenly every instinct in her body insisted that she stop, that she walk away. That she tell Adam what was going on, perhaps, so he could fix it all. Or perhaps that she should just finish the transfer protocol project and forget that this entire thing happened. Forget that she knew about Sonya, let the whole thing drop from her mind.

And it was then, while she crouched next to the black box absorbed in these thoughts, that she heard a sound that she would never forget. It was a sound that completely banished all thoughts of abandonment and betrayal from her head, quelling any desire in her to run from something that she knew she could never un-know.

From deep inside the box's dim interior came a sigh; the sorrowful, fitful sigh of a child who has cried for hours and has no tears left to cry.

Steeling herself for the worst, Anna flipped the final latch and let it fall open, then took the lid in both hands and slowly lifted it up. It creaked a loud creak, the noise of rarely used and never oiled hinges. Anna's spirit sank as it occurred to her that this box probably was not meant to be opened for a long, long time. She pushed the top all the way open and looked inside. Initially she saw nothing but a strange paper-like substance inside, very much like opening a gift wrapped in tissue paper. She guessed it was some sort of insulating substance meant to protect the subject inside and she reached in and spread the paper apart. Even with all of the time her mind had had to accommodate itself to such a disturbing idea, Anna found herself unprepared for what she saw next.

Lying on her back in the bed of insulating paper was the limp body of a little girl, her slender arms straight against her sides and her spindly legs sticking straight forward. She was dressed in a flimsy piece of clothing that resembled a hospital gown in that it only covered the front, and it was shifted around almost as if the girl had moved quite a bit since being put into the box. But it was her face and head that caused Anna to feel horribly queasy yet again. The girl had no hair to speak of on the top of her head; rather, in an obscene parody of long hair, from her scalp there sprouted innumerable slender probes that connected to wiring which flowed out of one end of the box and into the computer. The skin of her scalp had actually been peeled away in some spots where larger probes had been inserted.

The girl's face looked similar to her picture in her file, except this face was even more sunken and tortured. She wore a sort of blindfold or eye protection of some sort, and thrust into her nose was a long thin oxygen tube. Embedded into her abdomen were two other tubes, one for food and one for waste presumably, and in her arm was stuck an IV. All of the girl's skin shone a pasty white, and tattooed into her upper arm was the number SVC1001-1FX.

Anna gaped at the miserable form in the box for several long minutes, her soul devoid of any feeling other than absolute revulsion and fierce sadness. However, instead of willing herself to go numb, to feel nothing this time, she dared to fully savor the depth of her grief as she looked at Sonya. There was a grave injustice at work here and Anna could not help but feel herself moved to sorrow.

Then she heard the sound again, and clearly saw Sonya's chest rise briefly and fall in a long unconscious and broken sigh. A single tear trickled out from underneath the blindfold and disappeared into the paper below the little girl as she grimaced faintly. Anna saw the tear, the sigh, the pitiful condition of the helpless subject in front of her and in that moment something snapped. Whether it was the repellant combination of human and machine or the sudden thought that the girl had a strange beauty about her, she was never sure. Whatever it was, tears surged into Anna's eyes; she leaned on the side of the box and wept, and as she did so she put out a hand and touched the girl's face softly, feeling the surprising cold of Sonya's skin. The unconscious form of the little girl did not noticeably respond to her touch though, and Anna wept more.

As she sobbed a notion crossed her mind and grew stronger the longer she looked at the black box and its occupant. Who was this little girl to Daniel? A friend? That seemed unlikely, considering he didn't project an air of approachability especially to a small child. Or was the girl his daughter? Anna stared into the child's face and tried to recall Daniel's face for comparison, but the trauma of the girl's ordeal made it difficult to tell if there was a resemblance.

Then she remembered that she still had the other number to look up, and in a lucid flash she surmised that the other serial number must belong to Sonya's mother, since Daniel had described both of them with such animated language. The girl must be his daughter then. The question still remained as to what both mother and daughter were doing in the SubVersion Complex in the first place, but that was for a later time. Anna quickly closed the box again, replaced the screws, and attempted to rearrange everything as close to its original position as possible.

After looking out the window and seeing the sun dipped low in the sky, she decided that she would pursue the second serial number in the morning, when she was fresh from a real sleep and not a long nap on the couch in her clothes. She turned to take one last look at the computer monitor and her pulse quickened at what she saw.

In the Output window new words had appeared: 'I heard you crying did you touch my face please make it stop hurting Anna please don't leave.'

The words ripped Anna's heart out. She winced as she deleted the log and closed out of the Input and Output windows, not wanting to have to explain to this child that she needed to leave and get some rest. Besides, she remained divided as to what to do about the entire situation. There was no way to just take the girl out; it was not something Anna could do on her own anyways. Neither was there an easy way to convince Dr. Jarrod to stop his experiment. He would never stop, she was convinced. Nor could she simply let the whole matter drop, she just couldn't.

The entire drive back home was dominated by the image of that girl's face floating in Anna's consciousness, the horrible probes and needles protruding from the unfortunate creature's head, the plaintive sigh. The emotions of the day threatened to overwhelm her as she guided her car back home, and she wiped away more than one tear as she pulled back down her street. Her hands still shook on the steering wheel.

As she passed his house she noticed that Mr. Vickers had his downstairs lights turned on, and as she pulled into her driveway she looked over curiously to see what might be going on inside. The blinds blocked the windows of the kitchen but she could see through the other window that Mr. Vickers stood near the front door, speaking with very animated gestures to someone out of sight. As Anna looked closer at Mr. Vickers she could see that fierce anger burned in his face. She had never seen him look so angry; in fact she had never seen him really angry at all, ever.

Another strange thing in the course of a very strange day. She ran into her house, shut and locked the door carefully this time and set the alarm, and retired to her room. A deep cloud of gloom settled on her as she undressed and fell into bed, and her indecision smoldered inside making her heart burn. She didn't know what to do.

The second serial number was the only thing she could latch onto for comfort. She would find out who and what it was and then figure out what to do next.

 

The SubVersion Complex, Chapter Thirteen

Finally! We get a peek behind some of the secrets that surround Central Admin and Anna's new position. Here is the next chapter of The SubVersion Complex. Hope you all enjoy! If you missed Chapter Twelve, click here. And stay tuned for the next three chapters or so, in which much of the big terrible secret is revealed.

This book is intended for a more mature audience, so be advised.

╗ THIRTEEN ╚

SHADOW DATA

With a gasp and a start Anna surged awake from a powerful nightmare and came bolt upright. Her eyes burned, her back ached, and her brain throbbed. She blinked groggily in what felt like the most intense light she had ever seen. As the murk in her head began to disperse she noticed that it was morning, birds were chirping and sunlight was streaming through the windows.

Her thoughts began to race as she carefully put both feet on the floor. Daniel, the gun, the blackmail attempt; had it all actually happened or had her half-drunk neurons invented a memorable fiction? She then found herself looking at the living room windows, and after glancing down, she confirmed that she had indeed slept on the sofa all night in her work clothes. The whole episode from last night heaved back into her memory and she put her head in her hands. As she did so she found that her right elbow and wrist hurt like mad, the same arm Daniel had wrenched behind her back.

It had been real, and she was still trapped.

If she had been less tired she might have begun to cry again but she found her eyes were bone dry. Nothing would have come out of them even if she had wanted to. She willed herself to stand and stumbled to the bathroom. She flicked on the lamps above the mirror and looked at herself. She was shocked to see just how badly she looked. Her makeup and mascara had smeared everywhere, her hair had all been pushed to one side, and there was a crease across her cheek from the sofa pillow. She sighed in numb resignation and looked at her watch.

It read twenty 'till ten. Anna froze, looked at it again. Then she swore, grabbed her commex from her purse, and raced upstairs while furiously tapping out a message to Terry saying that she would be very late for work. In a flash she had showered, changed, perfumed and was about to race out the door when she spotted something on the floor in the living room.

It was a scrap of crumpled paper. She picked it up and again saw the numbers that Daniel had scrawled there in pen. He was clever, putting the number on paper and not somewhere digital. A piece of paper could make it through Central Admin's security without a problem, provided it was stuffed into a good hiding place. Seeing the numbers again caused some of the panic to return though, and it was only with a good deal of effort that she kept her breathing normal and her hands from shaking. She pushed the paper into her blouse and ran out the door.

She rode in an enervated daze on autodrive all the way to the Central Admin complex, mulling over what Daniel had tasked her to do. She was not sure exactly how she was going to do what he wanted; she wasn't even sure that what he was looking for was real, let alone able to be discovered. She cursed and stared blankly out the window as the car slipped quietly into D.C. and found its own way into the underground parking garage.

Even as she rode the elevator to her floor she had not decided what to do with the numbers. Daniel had suggested using the “Search All” function from her desk computer but she was not quite as sanguine as he that it would be that simple. She briefly considered turning the numbers in to the Secretary, throwing herself on his understanding and hoping for the best, but the specter of being firebombed by Verité's hackers reared its head and she put it out of mind. Central Admin was paranoid, probably too paranoid for mercy or understanding.

It was two numbers, simple enough. Daniel only said he wanted to know the status of the two females and that was it. Nothing more. She suddenly had a thought: once the threat of blackmail had been lifted, she could tell Adam then and explain what happened. The only problem with that, though, was that Anna had gotten the suspicion from Daniel's attitude last night that he had a mole in Central Admin. How else could he have known about her conversations with Dr. Jarrod, about her code slicer, and all the other various tidbits he knew about her?

Deep in the midst of these musings she was startled when she collided headlong into someone and almost toppled over. She shook off her distraction and saw the rumpled shape of Dr. Jarrod, his glasses askew on his nose and his coat twisted. She was also surprised to find herself in the hallway near Terry Garnham's office.

“I am so sorry, Doctor!” she stammered. “I didn't see you coming.”

“Perfectly all right, Miss McLean, perfectly all right!” he replied, beaming despite the collision. He straightened his coat and glasses and beckoned to her. “I was about to ask Officer Garnham myself if you were coming in today, but here you are! Come, you really must follow me to my lab. You were summoned to the Secretary's office last night so I worked mostly by myself, and I had a bit of a breakthrough!”

“That's good,” Anna replied absently. She remembered why she had wandered to this part of the building in the first place, to give Terry the best possible excuse she could think of for being late. She began to edge past the doctor but he blocked her with his stocky frame and smiled.

“You are not ecstatic at this news?” he asked with a chuckle. “You, Annalise McLean, the one who has salivated for this chance for years, and you are not even interested in hearing more about it?”

Anna tried to smile back. “I'm so sorry, Doctor, I had a bad night and I'm late and I need to report in with Officer Garnham before I really do anything today. Please let me go by?”

Dr. Jarrod reluctantly stood to the side and waved her on. “By all means, go, yes, but hurry to my lab as soon as you can allow. I used the algorithm you suggested earlier this week and I am already getting results. You should be excited!”

“I am, and I'll be there soon, just give me a bit.”

The short man shrugged. “Very well. You know where to find me.” He turned and disappeared around the corner.

Anna steeled herself and approached Terry's office. It hadn't even been a full work week yet and she was late. She saw Terry sitting at her desk and with a rap on the glass door, let herself in.

Terry immediately stood as Anna entered. “I got your message. There is no need for an explanation. The Secretary himself told me you had a bit of heavy news last night and might need the next day or so to sort it out.”

Anna blinked in surprise, then felt her stomach convulse at the irony of the situation. Heavy news indeed. Just not the kind that Adam or Terry think. She smiled weakly at Terry and turned to leave, but she heard her orientation officer ask with some concern, “Are you all right, Anna?”

“Yes,” Anna replied in her most convincing tone, turning back. “Why wouldn't I be?”

Terry bit the inside of her cheek and Anna could tell she was holding something back. Then the blonde woman shrugged and sat back down. “You just looked like you hadn't gotten any sleep, that's all.”

“Oh.” Anna could think of nothing more to say so she exited Terry's office and rushed down the hall to the office that had been set aside for her. It was more of an afterthought, since she would be spending so much time in the lab with Dr. Jarrod, but it was a serviceable office space. She sat down at the desk, woke the computer up, and after furtively glancing around she pulled the paper from her blouse and spread it out on the desk.

The numbers stared back at her, suddenly ominous. She was unsure of what they really meant, or what females they could refer to, but she was determined to see if the search function would find them. She picked the top number to research first, and typed 'SVC1001-1FX' into the “Search All” bar on the computer screen. After a moment of hesitation, she struck the Enter key and waited.

The computer dispassionately ran the number through the database, taking longer than Anna had expected it would. Then an error message popped up, which read “Top Secret Security Clearance Required.” Her stomach sank, and she entered and ran the number again. Again, the same result. What to do next? The computer waited patiently while Anna tapped her nails on the desk and pondered the problem. Then a thought occurred to her and, pulling her chair back from the desk, she looked underneath.

She smiled when she found it: the ID badge scanner screwed to the bottom of her desk. Terry had shown her how to swipe her ID and to use it as an access key. Terry had also made it clear that her badge would unlock any restricted access point that was relevant to her job, and Adam had said he wanted her as his replacement. Perhaps, just perhaps, she had been granted higher security clearance than she thought?

It was worth a try. Anna pulled out her badge, held it up to the scanner, and swiped.

The computer chimed and Anna looked up in surprise. Next to the error message was a new dialog box that read “Security Access recognized for Annalise Leslie McLean. Do you wish to proceed?” Underneath, there was a box for Yes and a box for No. She was floored that it actually worked, but there was little time to celebrate. With bated breath she selected Yes.

In a flash the screen changed, and a header bar stretched across the top. The text in the header was big, bold, and unmistakable: The SubVersion Complex Central Secure Database. Anna breathed hard with fear and wonder; whatever it was, Daniel was telling the truth. It did exist.

Now, as she saw the header bar with the text inside it, she began to wonder at the name. She had assumed it was the word “subversion,” a surefire conspiracy theorist term if she had ever heard one before for crackpots who railed against the government. But looking at it now it seemed awfully similar to HomoGen's “Versions.” The only problem was she had never heard of a “SubVersion” before. Her puzzlement increased, and soon she was doubting whether they had any connection at all. The only other thing she knew that used “sub versions” were computer files, and she felt fairly certain it was not that.

The computer started to think again, and soon began throwing up a whole slew of data that flashed by so quickly that Anna had trouble deciphering it. She scrolled back to the top of the data report and was startled to see a small picture. Grimacing at her from the page was the image of a child, probably six or seven years old, with a shaven head and prominent facial features. Although Anna knew it was a female from what Daniel had told her, it would have been difficult to tell just by looking at the picture whether it was a boy or a girl. The girl's sunken eyes exuded sadness and the tight line of her mouth only added to the disturbing effect. Anna stared for several seconds in a sort of fascinated unease at the face, then slowly began to comb through the text of the data. It gave things like running stats of height, weight, body temperature, and hundreds of other data points that stretched for pages and pages.

Finally, near the end, Anna found something interesting. The section featured the title “Subject Transfer History” and gave a short list of what looked like differing locations. At the end was printed a small note, which simply read “Specimen transferred out. New serial created, see below.” Below was a new number.

Anna was mystified and troubled. The data only made some sense to her; of the rest of it she felt like she probably didn't want to make sense. Her curiosity begged to know who this little girl was, but it looked like for now she would have to be content with where the girl was located. As far as Anna could tell the girl had been listed for only a short while under the number Daniel had provided. According to the note at the end of the page the serial number had changed, and the database read that the space once occupied by serial number SVC1001-1FX now sat vacant.

If the complex was secret, as indeed it seemed to be, then it would have its own numbering system so that whatever got moved out of it would take on a new digital identity and leave the old safely behind. The question was where was the girl moved to? She typed the new serial number into the search bar and was rewarded with a few results. However, as she weeded through them she realized that she was looking at an incomplete list of transfer locations. The last one only showed the tag “In Transit,” and that was it. No end location, no terminus of any kind.

Frustrated that she had come this far only to hit a dead end, Anna backtracked and selected the last known location of that serial number. To her surprise the computer claimed that the last entity to have control over this particular girl was FPSO, the Federal Population Services Office. The puzzle only became more mystifying at every turn. She sat for a moment, unsure of what to do next, until an idea came to mind. If she called up FPSO she might get some answers.

After finding their number in the Central Admin directory, Anna dialed the FPSO front desk on her commex and waited. It took only two rings before she heard a pleasant feminine voice say, “Hello, this is FPSO.”

“Hi,” Anna replied awkwardly, “My name is Annalise McLean from Central Admin and I need some information from you.”

“With pleasure! Is this a secured request or an unsecured request?”

Anna paused, and panicked momentarily. They were asking if the information request was classified or not. Was it? The original serial number was, without a doubt. But the new one? Anna decided to take a chance. “It should be categorized as an unsecured request, since it's just a simple transfer order that occurred in your department.”

“Sure, hold on one second . . . “ The woman on the other end was only gone for a few moments. “All right, do you have a number I can track the order with?”

Anna read her the new serial number and sat with bated breath for the reply. A full minute passed before the woman's voice came back on again. She sounded confused.

“Miss McLean? That number doesn't seem to even exist in our system. Either it was erased somehow or that order number never came through here. Are you sure it was correct?”

Anna tapped her fingernails harder on the desk in frustration. “Is there no paper record, perhaps? Do items that go through there have a paper traveler that goes with them?”

“They do,” the woman's voice replied, “But it might be buried in a stack somewhere by now.”

Anna sighed and was about to give up when, on impulse she blurted out, “Can you see if maybe someone there can find it? It's important for a project I am working on right now.”

The first sign of any irritation on the other end of the line came through in the form of a long breath. “We can try, although it might take a while. Give me the date the order was supposedly made and your number so we can call you back if we find something.”

Anna gave her the date and number and hung up, ever more mystified and confused. She shut the database down on her computer and pushed the crumpled paper back into the safety of her shirt, then made her way down to Lab A1A. As she pushed the door open she saw Dr. Jarrod bent excitedly over his reactive computer, occasionally straightening up to pace about but always coming back to the same pose. When he heard Anna's footsteps he turned and smiled his big toothy smile at her.

“Ah, you are here at last!” he exclaimed. “At least you haven't missed all of the excitement.”

“That's good,” Anna replied, managing a small grin. She dropped her purse off to one side and bent over the computer with him. New code flashed by on the myriad displays and Dr. Jarrod happily tapped away on the keyboard, even whistling while he did so. When he was satisfied he stepped back and looked at Anna.

“I can't believe I hadn't seen it before, Anna. For the longest time I had thought one couldn't employ a Bates-Bigley equation set on a human brain wave but it turns out your suggestion to use it was the correct one. With a little bit of adaptation I managed to change the algorithm for this particular brain wave pattern. It compensates perfectly for the brain's protective mechanisms and pins the proverbial fly to the table, so to speak. I can't thank you enough.”

Anna smiled a real smile this time and felt glad that she was one of the few people that could understand even half of what he had just said. “So do we have a time frame of when we'll be able to see this transfer protocol in action?”

Dr. Jarrod shrugged. “It could be as early as this afternoon, or as late as next week, who knows? But I am confident that it will be sooner rather than later.” He handed Anna a tablet. “Help me write the rest of this code? The computer needs to run the full scan of the brain wave pattern before we can even begin to input data into the brain itself.”

“How long will that take?” Anna asked.

“Probably a couple hours.”

₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪

It took much longer than a couple of hours for the brain scan to complete. Anna and the doctor worked on everything else they could think of in the meantime waiting for it, but it seemed like it would never finish. The doctor's optimism didn't appear to wane much under the pressure of waiting, but his energy levels definitely did. He was moving quite a bit slower by the time four o'clock rolled around and he found himself continually yawning. Anna on the other hand grew more and more tense as the hours passed, consumed with thoughts of Daniel and his hacker buddies, and why FPSO was taking so long to find her info for her.

At four fifty-five her commex rang and Anna jumped to get it. The familiar woman's voice crackled from the speaker. “Miss McLean?”

“Yes, it's me. Did you find what I was looking for?” Anna asked breathlessly.

The woman on the other end didn't sound half so pleasant now, but her answer made Anna's heart leap. “We did find it, actually, buried in a box with a hundred other order slips. You got lucky, we were just about to shred that entire lot.”

Anna's heart thumped hard. “So what does it say? Does it give the final transfer location of the serial number?”

“It does, right here at the bottom.” There was the scratching sound of paper being unfolded. “Ah, here we go. It says the last transfer location was . . . Laboratory A1A in Central Admin. Is there anything else I can help you with?”

Anna mumbled a “no thank you” and ended the call. A cold sweat broke out over her entire body and as she put the commex back into her purse the skin of her scalp began to crawl. So the transfer order ended up here, in this very room, she thought. The eerie conclusion clicked in her mind. That means that the little girl in the picture is somewhere in this room right now. She glanced around the lab in a futile attempt to divine where the girl might be, but nothing immediately presented itself. It was only when her eye fell on Dr. Jarrod that a horrible thought came into her mind.

In front of him, buried in its network of cables and paraphernalia was the heart of the reactive computer, the coffin-like black box that Anna had fleetingly thought earlier could comfortably house a small child.

No, it couldn't be . . .

The notion disturbed her so badly that it was an effort to remain outwardly calm. She walked over to where the doctor was standing and stood next to him, attempting to appear as nonchalant as possible. It didn't matter much though. The doctor yawned one last time and grabbed his coat from a nearby workbench.

“I have officially had enough for one day. That's what I get for going sleepless last night.” He chuckled and patted Anna's arm. “You're younger and hardier than I, Anna. Would you be able to stay and make sure that the brain wave sequencer finishes correctly, if indeed it finishes tonight at all? It looks like it shouldn't take more than hour, I hope.”

Anna nodded as casually as she could and Dr. Jarrod thanked her and turned on his heel towards the door. At the door he gave Anna a little wave and disappeared, leaving her all alone in the room.