Chrysalis

59

Roz Madrigal sat on a tall stool beside Wrigley. The most critical part of their work was done — guiding Logan to the Helix interface — yet they remained, glued to the monitoring stations.

She stared at Logan, seated in the cage, various leads snaking away from his arms, chest, and the prototype Omega III module framing his right ear. His eyes were sometimes open, more often closed — but even then, she could see rapid movement behind the eyelids. Everybody who experienced Omega VR moved in one way or another: usually, it was just involuntary jerks of a finger, a shift of the head to avoid some imaginary object — and, of course, the inevitable smiles brought on by the novel experience. But Logan was far more active. At times his legs churned, as if running or climbing; he gasped occasionally, from effort or pain — and whether his eyes were open or closed, his head was constantly in motion, searching for a path through the digital maze his avatar was navigating.

She had retrieved some equipment Mossby requested, along with a few items she handed off to Dr. Purchase and Snow, the security spook from Department X. She’d set up Logan in the cage and guided his progress with Wrigley. But now there was nothing more she could do. The necessary framework had been jury-rigged: either it worked, or it wouldn’t.

Dafna remained at the main entrance to the lab, gun at the ready, while Peyton limped painfully from station to station, gazing around, now and then murmuring to Mossby.

A beep — low and insistent — began once again to issue from the monitoring device Dr. Purchase had asked for, tied into a BioCertain feed that would alert him to any malfunctioning Voyagers. This was the fourth time it had gone off. When it first sounded, the implants designer nearly had a fit; the second time, he’d rushed from the lab. A part of her resented him for setting up the device, which was obviously linked to implants that began to malfunction. It was already well past the noon deadline — why this perverse need for confirmation? She realized that he, like the rest of them, had been hoping this was a bluff… or that, perhaps, the deadly mechanism would fail.

“Will somebody shut that damned thing off?” Snow said. “I’m trying to guide Logan to the right node.”

Almost gratefully, Roz slid off the stool, walked over to the device, and shut it off.

“He’ll probably just turn it back on when he finishes puking,” Wrigley said. “Assuming he ever does.”

Peyton stopped his pacing near Mossby’s workstation. “You’ve got everything you need?”

“Everything but Cardiff’s malware.”

“Mind hazarding a timeline?” The security honcho had, Roz noticed, become much more deferential to Mossby in the last hour or so.

“I need the code fully intact — and for that channel Purchase established to BioCertain’s command terminal to stay live. Assuming Cardiff’s code isn’t encrypted, I just need to analyze it, repurpose, compile it into an upgrade wrapper — and send it out.”

“To every client?”

“It’s the only way. Any devices with backup reservoirs will immediately render them unusable. Any implant that doesn’t will just ignore the code.”

Peyton nodded.

Roz, listening to this exchange, now realized Wrigley was trying to get her attention. She glanced toward him.

Wrigley nodded toward the alarm she’d just muted. “That’s the fourth. If these assholes keep their promise, they’re going to be upping their kill rate significantly to reach a thousand by midnight.”

A cold calculation — but Roz had been thinking the same thing. “Perhaps it needs time to scale up. Maybe I should head out and check on our people. They have enough on their plates keeping the rollout on track. If certain clients start going off-line for no reason… it could turn into a madhouse.”

“That’s good thinking. And Roz? Be careful.”

As she made for the exit, she heard Snow speak in his radio. “Grady? Get ready down there — it won’t be long.” Then he lowered the radio and addressed the room. “All right! People, give me some quiet, please. I’m guiding this bad boy home.”