Chapter 4
562 Words
Chapter 4
X and Shortcut sat in the plane and studied the black box.
“I hope Brockway didn’t put up too much of a fight,” Shortcut said.
“Nothing I couldn’t handle. But he said something about an Android Winter.”
“Never heard of it.”
“He wasn’t making any sense. I couldn’t tell if he was serious or if it was a result of his chips malfunctioning.”
“At least Aruba’s back online.”
X looked out at the night sky where Aruba was twinkling on the horizon. He thought of Sparrow. “And safe.”
“I’m dying to know what’s in this box. Probably a bad virus.”
Shortcut squeezed two sides of the black box, revealing two small prongs. He hooked it up to a computer and watched as the box glowed gold and hummed. A shimmering wall of information appeared around the box, rotating like rings on a planet.
“I’m going in,” Shortcut said. His lens lit up and emitted a laser that connected with the shimmering wall.
“Good luck,” X said.
Shortcut felt his vision surge forward as his lens connected with the black box. He touched down in a dark room, on a circuit board floor. A dark, circular tunnel lay before him. The walls flashed as information flowed through them, illuminating the world for a moment before flashing dark again. The air smelled like smoke and silicon, probably a remnant from X’s fight, and he could taste the burning in every part of his mouth.
He started down the path, each step reverberating into the darkness. The pathway was coarse and rigid under his feet, full of grooves and recesses. He relied on his lens to see in the darkness, and he felt his way through.
It was always dangerous to explore a black box. The UEA didn’t want hackers getting into them, so they created virtual reality environments that only humans could access. But they also riddled these areas with threats. If anyone entered who wasn’t supposed to be there, the system infected them with a virus that destroyed their lens and broadcasted their location. By the time they left the virtual box, android soldiers would be waiting to take them to jail. For this reason, few people hacked into androids.
Good thing Shortcut had security clearance.
He came to a circular door decorated with a symbol of a golden Earth with wings behind it—the UEA logo. He touched the door and it lit up, scanning his fingerprints. It chimed and opened into a long corridor with machine guns and lasers along the walls. Shortcut passed them with bated breath, and they tracked him as he walked slowly through the room.
“Almost there,” he said.
He came to another door with a control panel next to it. He entered a key code, swiped through a maze of dots, then answered a security question.
An explosion rocked the room, knocking him back.
“What the—”
The smoke cleared. The door was still shut tight and a logo had been burned onto it: a condor with wings of flame. Smoke rose from its wings, and the security panel for the door lay burning on the ground.
Shortcut tried to open the door, but it wouldn’t move.
He heard X’s voice. “What happened, Shortcut? You were convulsing just a moment ago.”
“I have no idea.”
“Are you inside?”
“Yes and no.”
“Is it a virus?”
“It’s a firewall. I can’t get into the inner chamber. It’s impenetrable.”
Shortcut blinked six times and felt himself being pulled from the virtual box. When he focused again, X was kneeling in front of him.
“What did you see in there?”
“I don’t know. But whatever it is, Fahrens isn’t going to like it.”
- Writer
