Chapter 3 - THE CODE IN THE BLOOD
The air in Room 13 grew heavy with the sudden, sharp scent of ozone.
Victor threw his weight against the steel door, but the deadbolt was thick, industrial-grade iron. Through the small, barred viewing window, he could see the hallway. It was illuminated by a strange, pulsing blue light.
Isabel was standing twenty feet away.
But she wasn't standing on the ground. Her feet were hovering inches above the concrete floor, her dark hair floating around her head as if she were underwater. Arc discharge—tiny ribbons of blue static electricity—crackled off her fingertips, grounding themselves into the damp walls of the corridor.
"Isabel!" Victor shouted, slamming his palms against the glass. "Listen to me! I don't remember! If I did this to you, I will fix it, but you have to let us out!"
The girl’s eyes slowly turned to him. They were entirely black, her pupils dilated so wide they swallowed her irises. "The anchor must be destroyed for the code to release," she said, her voice echoing not just through the air, but directly inside Victor’s mind.
A sharp, blinding pain exploded behind Victor’s left temple. He fell to his knees, clutching his head.
"Ah!" he gasped, his vision fracturing into digital static. Lines of raw binary code began to scroll across his retinas.
01001000 01000101 01001100 01010000
Beside him, Dr. Thorne was also on his knees, blood pouring from his nose. "She’s... she’s forcing the resonance," Thorne choked out, his skin turning a sickly gray. "Her brain is acting as a transmitter. She’s dragging the data out of your neural pathways by force. If she completes the download, your brain stem will liquefy!"
"How do I stop it?" Victor roared through the agony.
"The locket!" Thorne gasped, pointing a shaking hand at the silver crescent moon Victor had slipped into his pocket. "It’s a hardware limiter! It has a local electromagnetic pulse generator. Click the hidden button on the crest of the moon!"
Victor fumbled in his pocket, his fingers feeling like lead. His motor functions were rapidly degrading as the neural feedback loop tightened. His vision was almost entirely gone now, replaced by a roaring cascade of green and white code.
He found the locket. His thumb searched the cold silver surface, feeling for any imperfection. There—a tiny, raised ridge on the inner curve of the crescent.
He pressed it.
A high-pitched whine, like a charging jet engine, emanated from the locket.
Pop.
A localized electromagnetic pulse discharged from the device. The blue light in the hallway instantly vanished. The crushing pressure inside Victor’s skull snapped like a broken rubber band.
He collapsed onto his hands and knees, gasping for air, his chest heaving as sweat poured down his face.
Outside, there was a heavy thud.
Victor dragged himself up and looked through the window. Isabel had collapsed onto the wet concrete, unconscious, the static electricity gone.
"We have to go," Thorne muttered, pushing his way past Victor to kick at a weakened panel in the back wall of Room 13, revealing a narrow crawlspace that led to the old drainage system. "The syndicate’s cleanup crew will be here in ten minutes. The moment the pulse went off, they received her GPS ping."
Victor didn't look at Thorne. He managed to heave the rusted steel door open using a metal pipe as a lever. He ran to Isabel’s limp form, scooping her up into his arms. She felt impossibly light, like a bundle of dry twigs, her heart racing against her ribs like a trapped bird.
"I'm not leaving her," Victor said.
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"If you take her, they will hunt you to the ends of the earth," Thorne warned from the crawlspace entrance.
"They can try," Victor said, his eyes hardening into a cold, diamond-sharp focus. "But they forget one thing. I own the network they use to run."
