"Much worse," Chien began striping down. "The shock of dumping Alice from the system could kill her. I will go online and find her. We have counter measures that will protect me and I can use to reinforce her avatar."
Devin watched from a short distance away, helpless, "Let me go. It's my computer and I have more experience with the AI's."
Chien shot a suspicious glance at him while programming the SDC, "That is not wise. You are a suspect in this case."
Devin started to retort, but a muffled "BOOM" came from the building's far end. Lights flickered and the technicians looked around nervously as vibrations passed through the room. A beat later the fire alarm blared to life and everyone began evacuating.
"Hey!" Devin exclaimed, squirming in the security guard's grip as the man dragged him out of the room.
Chien was climbing down into the SDC, seemingly oblivious to these new events transpiring around him.
"Chien! Let me ride piggy-back!" Devin pleaded, "If you run into trouble or get killed out there I can report what happened. Besides, they're evacuating the building. We can keep each other appraised."
"Let him go!" Chien shouted at the guard, who paused. "Watch the door and evacuate the boy if necessary. Devin come here."
Devin broke free of the guard's hold and rushed across the room to where Chien was modifying the SDC's settings.
"I'm locking you out of Admin privileges for this system," Chien said as he worked. "You will only be able to monitor and communicate with me. Under no circumstances are you to dump the chamber," Chien slipped down into the SDC, pulling the hatch shut behind him.
Devin monitored the log in sequence. Chien came online and immediately his pulse and blood pressure skyrocketed.
"Chien?" Devin shouted into the headset, "Chien? Are you there?"
"Are you all right?" Devin's concerned voice crackled ethereally through the surrounding air.
"Yes," Chien replied, "I am here. You're voice is unclear, but I will maintain contact."
He stood in a tunnel comprised of twisted black wires and rubber tubing. Electrical pulses ran intermittently along the conduits, creating a random strobe effect in the darkness. Ahead the floor vanished into an obsidian pool. Behind the tunnel tangled into a dead end.
With a feeling of dread, he put one foot into the water, where it disappeared. The fluid felt thick and syrupy, each step like moving in slow motion. It was up to his waist ten yards from the shore, when it held him fast.
"Devin," he spoke to the air, hoping he could still reach the boy, "I'm stuck. I think I'm inside the AI, but I'm trapped and cannot proceed."
Devin's voice crackled through the air, barely comprehensible, "Hold- I'm-BZZZ... load-CRACKLE... sector editor."
Loading a sector editor? Chien thought, But the boy doesn't have administrator privileges.
The wire weave walls perforated, eyes pushing through to cast spotlights on his avatar with silent curiosity. A thin, black tendril reared up out of the water, coming level with his head. Its pointed tip hovered inches from the bridge of his nose, then split apart to reveal a spinning drill.
Chien hit the log-out toggle on his belt. No response. "Devin," he said urgently, the drill closing in, "Your immediate assistance would be greatly appreciated."
"Hang on Chien," Devin shouted over the fire alarm.
He mimicked Chien's hand movements from when the man entered the admin password on the touch screen and Devin was granted full power over the system. Then he pulled out his pocket watch, setting the time two minutes to midnight. The watch face flipped open, and he removed the flash drive hidden there. It carried copies of all the software stored in his now-confiscated monocle.
Devin fell to his knees as another explosion rocked the building. Florescent lights popped, raining glass onto the buckling floor. An air duct fell through the roof and crashed onto a workbench. Electronic Equipment slid from tables onto the floor and bookcases filled with components fell forward into the room. The guard in the doorway shouted something to Devin, but it was lost under the klaxon. The man brandished a gun and ran down the hall. Moments later, gunfire reported in the distance.
Devin cowered at the SDC's base, holding his arms over his head protectively. With a trembling hand he managed to reach up and insert the flash chip, loading the software into Chien's avatar. The rest was up to him now.
The room went dark, red emergency lighting taking over. The LCD on Chien's SDC flatlined. With a feeling of dread Devin looked over to Alice's SDC, tipped to one side on the warping floor. Her LCD read lifeless as well.
Devin shook his head and stood up to flee the room, but stopped short when he found Dana blocking the doorway, breathing heavy. Her clothes were torn and there was blood trickling from a swollen knot over one eye. Her gun pointed behind her, she leaned into the room.
"We have to evacuate! The building's under attack," she yelled. "Some kind of mecha."
Devin followed the muzzle of Dana's gun down the hallway. In the emergency lighting's eerie half light were the excited motions of a struggle. Flashes of gunfire revealed uniformed security guards crouching in doorways and something massive, lurching down the hall. It moved awkwardly, unbalanced. A spiral of six arms smashed at walls as it forced its oversized form down the corridor. Devin recognized it, a nightmare come to life, unreal.
It was LD-50.
The AI had Alice clamped in its grip. A swath of tendrils bound her wrists, legs, and waist, suspending her over a cavernous mouth lined with endless rows of needle-sharp teeth.
She wondered what it was to die like this. The virtual simulation involved chewing up her avatar, but how did it work physiologically? What were its mechanics in the physical world? Was the AI going to erase her mind from her brain like data from a hard drive? Or would it simply convince her body of its demise?
Suspended so high in the air she witnessed the thing's awesome vastness. It was like an entire world made up of wriggling appendages and alien machinations, stretching into the distance as far as the gray haze allowed. Towers of braided wire spiraled up into the air, branching out into a canopy of dark chaos completely obliterating the sky. She was a speck in the AI's world.
A nearby tower trembled and collapsed into the body like a building imploding from demolition. Portions of the AI disintegrated in green light flashes, as if devouring it from the inside. The towers surrounding the wound unraveled, their tendrils thrashing the air.
Then Alice was free of the AI's bonds, but she did not fall. Instead she floated above the AI, weightless, but her attention was too absorbed in the conflict below to notice.
She zoomed in close to the action, without knowing how she did so. The fallen tower's orphaned tendrils wriggled into the AI's body. Torn appendages flopped about, fountaining electricity in a futile attempt to communicate with the mass.
A bulge was forming in the main body. Like a bubble rising to the surface, the wires and pipes warped and stretched out of shape around it. It burst, expelling an avatar from the nest of writhing components flailing to weave this new wound closed. It was Chien, floating in the space above the burst and facing down an onslaught of tentacles.
Alice was in front of him instantly, arms spread wide, "Wait Chien! Don't shoot!"
"They're dead," Devin told Dana when she asked about Chien and Alice.
Dana looked in at the two monitors with their lifeless readings, narrowed her eyes, and pulled off two rounds at LD-50. Sparks flashed where the bullets glanced off the thing's grinning lopsided head. Now only two officers stood between her and the mecha.
The power came on, and the room's remaining lights flickered back to life. Devin's jaw dropped as both Alice and Chien's monitors showed life again. Devin ran over to survey the screens. Both their pulses were racing.