A Plain Jane Book One Read Free Page A

Jane's
physiology, and possibly the most interesting thing about her, was
that she didn’t sleep. To a normal person, that would seem like an
incredible feat, and pave the way for an enormous increase in
productivity, but it did not have that effect on Jane. She spent
the time when everyone else would be sleeping, staring at the sky
and imagining instead. She knew it was a regenerative process for
her body – she always got cranky if she wasn’t given time to dream
– yet she did not lose consciousness while she did it. It was
almost as if her brain never wanted to lose control of her
body.
    It was when Jane had
almost finished her work, and was finally getting ready to leave,
that the building shook. It was very slight at first, and she
hardly noticed it, but when the Central Intelligence – an
interconnected computer system that ran throughout the entire
Galactic Force – began to blare with a warning, she realized that
something serious was up.
    ‘ Ci, what's going on?’ she asked
the computer. She always called it Ci for short – its full title
being Centralized Intelligence Unit, but Ci being far shorter and
far cuter. Now that was perhaps another thing that set Jane apart:
though Ci was just a computer, Jane liked to treat her as something
more. Yes, she was simply an artificial intelligence, just a system
of computer banks and interconnecting panels; she did not have real
intelligence or emotions, and in fact, one could simply say 'she'
wasn't real at all. But Jane liked to think she should treat
everything – from a tree, to a human, to an alien, to a rock –
exactly the same. With perfect dignity. Well, maybe everything
except stones. Lucas Stones to be more specific.
    ‘ Depressurization has occurred in
containment chamber one,’ Ci replied quickly, her synthesized voice
expressing no emotion.
    While technically Ci did
not show any outward feeling, Jane always liked to think that there
was a certain warm efficiency about her.
    ‘ Thank you, Ci. Is it serious?’
Jane asked quickly.
    ‘ Containment has been
re-established. Correct personnel have been notified. There is no
risk to life or property,’ Ci advised, voice maintaining a
perfectly even tone.
    ‘ Thank you, Ci,’ Jane said with a
sigh. Which was a little silly really, because she shouldn't be
sighing at the rather pleasant fact that the building and everybody
in it were fine. Perhaps a deeply buried mutinous part of her
personality had wanted something a little more exciting, something
more adventurous for a Monday night. Yet Jane buried that voice,
said good night to Ci, and walked out of the office.
    It was when she was
walking across the campus to one of the transport hubs that the
thing attacked her. She had no warning, she had nowhere to run, and
she had no chance.
     

Chapter 2
     
    Lucas Stone
    ‘ Prack, how could we lose
containment?’ Lucas slammed his hand down on the bench, his armor
suddenly deploying.
    ‘ No idea, but we’ve got it back
now. No problem,’ Alex replied.
    No problem? Lucas thought
to himself, like hell. If there had been no problem, they would
never have lost containment in the first place. No problem meant
the experiment going off without a hitch and Lucas finally getting
some time to go home early one of these days and just having one
blessed night off.
    With his armor now in
place, he was picking up readings from his environment that were
being transferred directly to his central nervous system. It
sharpened his senses, gave him details that he could not see with
his ordinary eyes and could not hear with his ordinary ears. The
armor was like a living second skin. As soon as he activated it
with a single thought, it would grow up and cover his whole body in
a second. He had to admit that he thought it was some of the
coolest technology out there, and definitely the most
fun.
    Fun was nowhere on his
mind right now however.
    ‘ That thing is meant to be dead,’
he said slowly, crossing his arms, the move