The Utopia Experiment

74

“We’ve got company!”

Smith turned toward Randi’s voice and looked through the smoky glass at the armed detail pouring from the stairwell. Programmers appeared over the tops of their cubicles, watching the men with a mix of curiosity and fear.

“Everyone get down!” Smith shouted.

Javier had dealt with these men for years and was already way ahead of him — dragging his terminal to the floor and lying flat next to it with his hand hovering over the enter key.

Zellerbach, on the other hand, was lost in his own world — hammering away at his keyboard, muttering unintelligibly as he wreaked havoc in the world Dresner had created. Knowing that there was no point in trying to get his attention when he was like this, Smith ran at him and knocked him off his chair. The hacker squealed in protest, but was pacified when Smith moved the terminal to the floor in front of him.

Smith returned his attention to the guards and saw them fanning out to cover a man yanking on the locked door to the office. The programmers wisely started bolting for the exits.

“Any idea what kind of glass this is or how thick?” Randi said.

“I didn’t build the place!” de Galdiano answered, flattening himself further on the carpet. “Talk to the architect.”

She aimed her experimental pistol at the man trying to get through the door, lining up at an angle intended to keep a ricochet from bouncing back at her, then pulled the trigger.

It turned out to be regular tempered glass and not particularly thick. The ceramic projectile missed the man on the other side, but did succeed in collapsing the entire wall in a spectacular shower. With the opaque barrier gone, they were now fully visible to the ten or so security men on the other side. It took less than a second for them to open up with everything they had.

Randi dropped behind the meter-tall band of steel and Smith slithered across the floor to de Galdiano who, to his credit, seemed to be keeping it together. Randi aimed blindly over the wall and fired in the general direction of their attackers, but there wasn’t much else she could do. Dents began appearing in the metal behind her and the air was filled with the deafening ring of impacts. The barrier held, though. Security hadn’t brought anything designed to penetrate anything tougher than human flesh. Yet.

Smith was only a meter or two from de Galdiano when an intense ache enveloped his right arm. At first, he thought he might have been hit, but that was something he unfortunately had a great deal of experience with. This was completely different — something he’d never felt before.

“Javier!” he shouted, reaching for the switch on his Merge. “Now!”

De Galdiano didn’t move and for a moment Smith thought he hadn’t heard. Then he saw the bloodstain spreading out beneath the motionless man. With a million lives at stake, he abandoned his attempt to turn off his unit and went for the keyboard. The pain intensified and spread to his chest, strangling it in a vise-like grip as he crashed down on top of the dead man. It became impossible to breathe and his right arm felt paralyzed. He reached out with his left, vision starting to swim, and let it fall on top of the blood-splattered keyboard.