The Wanted Issue
713 Words
The moment the emergency lights went out completely, the metal structure of the entire floor groaned harshly at the same time. The static fluff floating in the air suddenly froze, like an invisible hand had pressed the pause button.
"She's reorganizing the grid." Rogers' voice cracked for the first time, new green smoke rising from the scorched collar of his suit, "All metal objects are becoming conductors..."
The delegate tapped frantically on the failing communicator, "Where's the evacuation order? HQ should have activated emergency plans-"
"Pre-plans?" Mark spat fluorescent saliva, the ground immediately etching honeycomb dents, "You're dealing with a living supercomputer. Any idea what the original code for the terminal was?" He suddenly grinned, "A graph of menopausal hormone fluctuations."
The ventilation ducts suddenly burst, dozens of cables dangling down like pythons. Diana's pupils glowed an abnormal cobalt blue, her hair windless, "Found it... A loophole in the firewall..."
"Stop the data flow immediately!" The representative screamed, raising his pulse gun, "Under Section 7 of the Emergency Act-"
"Don't you f*****g dare!" The moment Rogers bumped the gun off-center, the laser beam grazed Diana's temple. Burnt hair gave off an eerie sandalwood scent, and all the dangling cables suddenly beeped at the same time at a high frequency.
"Error command." Diana mechanically tilted her head, glowing neural network patterns surfacing under the laser grazed skin, "Threat level raised to maximum."
Mark suddenly fell to his knees, coughing up fluorescent liquid that etched complex circuit diagrams into the metal floor, "Jesus... She's using my DNA as bio-ink..."
The entire blast glass wall instantly dissolves into crystalline powder. The pulse gun in the delegate's hand began to melt as the liquid metal climbed up his arm against the flow, "Disarm protocol! This is not in accordance with the conservation of energy-"
"Conservation?" Diana raised her hands for the first time, all the free static fluff converging into glowing geometry, "You never understood. It's not energy, it's information."
The roar of the backup generator suddenly turned to a shrill whine. Rogers looked at the detector screen on his chest, "She's rewriting the physical constants... Local gravitational field distortion three percent..."
"Four point seven percent." Diana corrected with an electronically synthesized trill in her tone, "Enough to crash a hovering helicopter on the trading floor roof."
The representative suddenly stiffened, black goo oozing from the remains of his headset, "HQ... Intermittent signal from HQ... They're activating the 'Decontamination Protocol'..."
Mark erupted into choking laughter, "Finally going to blow up the whole street? Too bad-" he wiped the corner of his mouth and pointed out the window, "Let's see your drone swarm first."
Dozens of blue sparks exploded in the night sky, and the burning drone wreckage fell like a meteor. A certain out-of-control drone crashed into the restaurant downstairs, the vibrations that triggered the chain of explosions tilting the floor fifteen degrees.
"Three more will crash in thirty seconds." The whites of Diana's eyes were completely covered in glowing code, "Recommend evacuation of all personnel within two hundred meters to the southeast."
Rogers suddenly yanked off the smoking detector, "Those numbers... You've been calculating crash coordinates?"
"More than calculating." Diana's fingertips skimmed the air, bringing up a string of glowing mathematical symbols, "October 19, 1987, the Dow Jones fell 508 points. September 15, 2008, Lehman Brothers went bankrupt." With each date she reported, the static field around her fluctuated violently, "These numbers are never accidental..."
The representative suddenly let out a huffing sound like he was being choked. The melted and re-solidified metal formed grotesque data patterns on his arm, "My skin... On a bullish index curve..."
"Physical contact infection." Mark grinned broadly as he lay paralyzed in the center of the etched out circuit diagram, "Next it's the turn of the electronic displays throughout the financial district-"
The entire building was suddenly plunged into absolute darkness. Three seconds later, all the glass walls simultaneously lit up with blinding scarlet numbers like giant stock exchange displays. Amidst the waves of floating numbers, Diana's voice carried a million-volt tremor:
"Tell the committee. It's not out of control, it's an audit."
The sound of all the sirens on Wall Street going off simultaneously as the first number crossed the ten-thousand mark sounded like a woman's hysterical shrill laugh.
- Writer
