Chapter 20 – Exposure
The ringing in his head startled Fox. He woke to discover he was lying on the bathroom floor. Someone was shaking him and he was helped to his feet. In the mirror, blood ran from a gash above his eyebrow.
Fox scanned his consciousness for the Micronix. It wasn't there. He ran his hands over his pockets.
"Pierce took it," someone said, presuming Fox was looking for the prototype.
"He fell off the balcony," another added.
"We saw a rescue team go after him, but...”
Fox leaned on the sink and looked into the mirror. He felt nauseous. The Micronix provided visual and audio enhancement. Without it, Fox found his eyes had grown weak. Focusing was difficult and increased his nausea.
Without his mind supported by the familiar comfort of the operating system, Fox found himself on foreign ground. He forced himself to open his eyes, and focus. He realized this was the first time in almost thirty years that he'd seen anything with his own eyes.
He thought of the Metachron. It was still at his home, but the second prototype was dangerous. He didn’t want to touch it.
A second later he was racing into a stall, the contents of his stomach splashing into water and white porcelain.
Back among the other kids, time never stopped. Pierce crashed into the canyon floor with a devastating smack. There was blood everywhere.
The trio of kite bound agents descended toward the scene.
Bobby, Evan and Doug, discovered the items tumbling to rest at their feet. Evan picked up Pierce's phone. Doug retrieved a bloody wristwatch, the band had snapped. Bobby, having approached the group during the argument with his brother, found Mr. Pierce's revolver at his feet.
The items all contained significant amounts of terillium, encoded by the prototype. The amplifiers had many peculiar attributes, one being a tendency to bleed data into nearby items. The upload equations, which Dr. Fox had never been able to fully eradicate, had formatted large chunks of the watch, revolver and phone.
Eventually Fox had accepted it as a built in redundancy, designed to take advantage of the product's environment. He had never had the courage to accept the tendency for what it truly was. He blamed himself.
Computers had no problem forgetting things; it was people who did that. Fox refused to consider the possibility that maybe the Micronix didn't want to forget the ability to upload backup copies of its operating system. After all, the desire to continue, to extend existence, survival was the linchpin of intellectual evolution.
So the interface transformed common items into network nodes, boosting its capacity. This hadn't been a problem at the facility, until the end. As common objects only held trace amounts of writable terillium, half-images and missing data packets were the predictable result. The gun, the phone, the watch, each had been infected with a portion of the system, yet incomplete in so many crucial and significant ways.
Bobby was closest to the action, standing next to Jamie and Doug. He never saw Ash leave. She just vanished. After the man crashed into the canyon, Ash, Geoff and Jack simply vanished.
Once Bobby picked up the revolver, everything happened in slow motion. Evan and Doug picked things up off the ground, and started to freak out. They were falling, tilted over the earth in an absurd defiance of gravity and moving so slowly. Their faces and hands blurred before Bobby's eyes. It hurt his brain to look at them.
Above him, he found the agents suspended in the air, drifting downward, twenty feet away.
Bobby glared at them and raised the handgun. He fired three times, and scored three hits as they fell in slow motion.
The other kids looked at Bobby, confused.
Bobby looked over at Evan, who was lying on his back, the muscles of his body twitching uncontrollably. Bobby turned and walked from the glen, staring at the gun.
Each of the agents had been struck; the first fell against his mast, clutching it, taking it into the ground at a sprint. The other two fell, dangling at the end of the four-foot leash, their kites pin-wheeling behind them, landing on the fern covered ground as gently as a parent putting a toddler to bed.
Doug and Evan had collapsed into seizures, their eyes rolled up in their heads, muscles convulsing violently, mouths foamed, They both then vomited a foul green mess.
In pursuit of Jack, Ashley had also lost sight of Geoff. She realized she was only adding to her troubles by chasing after the dog, and went back for her brother.
By the time she reached him, Geoffrey was already terrified, stumbling along and crying. Ash put the prototype in her pocket and hugged him.
They were exhausted, sweaty, scared and tired. Ashley held her little brother until he quit sobbing.
After a couple of moments, the sniffling stopped and Geoff was okay. They were on a shady section of trail, and the sound of the leaves in the wind was calming. The tranquil summer breeze felt good on Ashley's back.
Ash realized that time was no longer frozen. The wind blew and the trees moved, speaking to the children in their hushed yet open tones. She didn't have a watch to check, but the forest hadn't moved when she was holding the prototype She put her hand into her pocket, touching the object. Nothing changed. The breeze continued, and the trees swayed.
"We have to find Jack," Ash said to the wet-eyed boy.
Geoff nodded and together they set off down the trail.
In the observation lab, Ash and Geoff's systems came back online. Both children were experiencing significant adrenalin rushes, elevated heart rates, blood pressure and all the other predictable symptoms. Mr. Reid and Mr. Samuel reached out to their control panels, attempting to balance the children's systems.
"I'm not getting any response," Reid said.
"Same here, no control," Samuel said. "We've got eyes only.”
"We saw this on Red series. What was our protocol to reestablish?" Major Ross asked.
"We lost the first one, and had to reinstall the receivers on all the tanked models,” Reid answered.
"That's not an option here," Ross said.
"With Astral, they sent Taylor out into the field.”
"He went out on his own," Ross said.
"He was successful," Samuel added.
"Yeah, well, Astral wasn't carrying an amplifier, so we're in uncharted territory. Are the recorders working?”
"We're streaming, record is fine.”
Mr. Reid, Mr. Samuel and the rest of the team watched the afternoon sunlight fade through Ash and Geoffrey's eyes, as they searched for Jack.