Code Breakers: Alpha Read Free Page A

little bit off the beaten track. We slip through the cracks in the system. We tracked a demon right here in the City. In you, and in your pal Mike.”
    “He’s here? He’s okay?”
    “Um… he’s kinda dead,” Petal said.
    “Mike? Dead? No. This can’t be. You’re lying. Surely!”
    Petal and Gabe stood watching, stony-faced.
    Gerry hoped this was all just a lie or some kind of big elaborate joke. Mike was like that, always playing pranks, but would he go this far? It was funny, sure, about the D-Lottery numbers, but not for this long, and these freaks? Maybe they killed him, and he was next. A billion thoughts bloomed into life and expired almost instantly. He tried to access the logic portion of Mags, but she didn’t respond. Probably occupied with informing the various official channels of his imminent demise. They’d need cover at work. His daughters would need a new father figure. And then there was his wife, Beth. She would need a new husband. The family unit was an important part of City Earth’s society. It was how things worked.
    A part of Gerry knew Beth wouldn’t be terribly upset. Their relationship, for whatever reason, was never particularly intimate. She had a ‘defined role in the family unit’ and was apparently happy with that. Still, it didn’t make it hurt any less.
    Turning back to them and trying to focus, Gerry said, “So tell me, what happened to Mike?”
    “He’s out back,” Gabe said. “Wanna see?”
    Gerry wasn’t sure if he did. All the time there was no physical evidence there was a chance this was all a massive misunderstanding—a nightmare.
    “Come through, Gez,” Petal said. “You’ll see.”
    “Is it bad?”
    “It’s a little screwed up, to be honest.” Her goggles returned to their inky opaqueness.
    Petal took Gerry by the hand and led him through an open doorway into a clinical kitchen: compact and barely large enough for four people. The cabinets and worktops were the usual self-clean white alloy.
    As he ducked under the low door frame, he noticed masses of wire mesh running through the ceiling from room to room. Shielding perhaps? Or a Faraday cage of sorts? That probably explained the security of their internal network.
    The kitchen smelled of alcohol. Numerous antique glass bottles were lined up on a wooden table. Next to them was an alloy container—about a half-metre square—filled with a writhing black liquid.
    Petal must have seen his confusion. “NanoStem solution. Similar to the stuff that Gabe used to heal your facial wound. This one we’ve impregnated with defence nodes. It’s liquid virus protection. Cool, huh?”
    Gerry didn’t know what to think. He just worked with numbers, factors, and probabilities.
    Underneath the stench of booze, something rotten hung in the air. A putrefied, sweet smell tingled his nose hairs and stuck in the back of his throat.
    Petal walked to a nook and opened a curtain. Sitting on his ass was Mike Welling. His skin had mulched to a grey-green mottled colour, as if it had rotted from the inside out. It sagged in disgusting black and purple lumps. He sat in a pool of black viscous liquid that dripped from every orifice—the NanoStem solution.
    “You can see we’ve been trying to help him. For two days we managed to keep it out, but last night the demon breached the ’Stem defence, and… well, you can see the results. It’s a particularly brutal one.”
    Waves of grief flashed through Gerry’s guts. His legs felt like rubber. He grabbed the edge of the table to support himself. “You’re mad. You’re all bloody mad.”
    “That’s possible, my friend, but ya need us,” Gabe said from the doorway. “That thing there is ya pal Mike. That’s what’s gonna happen to ya. It hacked Mike’s AI first, changed the exemption list, and has chosen ya for poezession. Y’ain’t got long, man.”
    “I don’t feel… Mags hasn’t changed. Nothing’s bypassed my security.”
    “Not yet,” Petal said. “But you