Genesis - Keith R. A. DeCandido [53]
If he had just been one second faster, One would still be alive.
Instead, his boss was in dozens of cleanly sliced cubic pieces on the floor of a metal corridor a thousand feet underground.
Jesus Christ.
"All right." Kaplan's voice sounded weak and hoarse, even to himself. He didn't care. He needed to focus. "Let's do it."
"Do what?" Spence looked at him like he was crazy. Kaplan wasn't sure he'd be wrong in that assessment.
"We have to complete the mission."
"There's no way I'm going down there."
Kaplan wanted very much to agree with Spence. He didn't want to go in there, either. That room had already killed four of his comrades, including One. One, for God's sake. Kaplan didn't think anything could kill him this side of a thermonuclear detonation, and even then, Kaplan would've laid even money on him making it through that.
Weakly, he said, "Her defenses are down."
"Deja vu, anyone?" Spence said snidely.
Kaplan ignored him.
This was what field agents did. This was what he wanted.
Well, not what he wanted. In fact, this was exactly what he hated: sitting uselessly typing code into a keyboard while everyone else risked their lives. It was precisely to avoid this sort of thing that he had left the Bureau.
Gingerly, he entered the corridor.
Trying very hard not to look at the remains—trying even harder not to pay attention to the smell of burning meat that permeated the corridor—he bent down and picked up the duffel bag with the EMP.
A hand on his shoulder scared the shit out of him. For one brief, insane moment, he thought it was One, telling him the exercise was over.
But it wasn't. It was Alice. Good old Ass-Kicking Alice, though she herself probably didn't remember that yet.
One was still just as dead.
She gave him a look of understanding.
Maybe she wasn't all back yet, but at least some of the instincts were there.
They entered the Red Queen's chamber. A dark room with a circular trapdoor in the floor, the rest of the room was decorated in the same boring metallic decor as the rest of the Hive. Kaplan couldn't imagine how people lived and worked down there all the time without going nuts.
Of course, maybe they did. Maybe that was what happened.
The door shut behind them, but Kaplan didn't panic. It was supposed to happen this time.
Opening the zipper, he hauled the device out of the duffel bag, placed it on the floor, then flipped open his wrist-top and tapped some commands in.
A second later, the trapdoor opened, and the Red Queen's massive CPU rose up into the room.
"Give me a hand with this," he said to Alice.
The pair of them picked up the EMP device from the floor and screwed it into the top of the CPU.
As they worked, Kaplan heard the whirring of the projectors that he knew were hidden throughout the chamber. Seconds later, a red-tinged hologram appeared in the middle of the room.
"Get out! Get out, you can't be in here!"
"Don't listen to anything she says," he said quickly to Alice. Normally he wouldn't need to bother, but in her current state, Alice wouldn't be expecting this. "She's a holographic representation of the Red Queen."
"You have to get out!"
"The head programmer modeled her after the daughter of some bigwig in the corporation. She'll try and deceive us, confuse us—"
"I wouldn't advise this. Disabling me will result in loss of primary power."
"—she'll say anything to stop us from shutting her down."
They finished setting up the EMP. Kaplan pulled out the transmitter that would activate the surge.
"I implore you."
Kaplan had never liked the idea of artificial intelligence. Computers were inherently stupid, only doing what they were told. The idea of AI was one he found contradictory, and potentially quite dangerous. It was like handing an atomic bomb to an autistic child. "Implore away."
"Please—please!"
At Kaplan's urging, he and Alice both moved to the far reaches of the room. His thumb hovered over the button on the remote that would shut the Queen down.
"You're all going to die down here."
Kaplan pushed the button.
The lights all went out, plunging