22

The Color of Blood

“I say ladies and gentlemen how long will it be before we cannot even have safely in our web searches, our email, our logins!? What say you!??”

Cassandra looked up at the big angry man on the podium and then scooted a little closer to her father.

“”No worries Cassie. Frank’s actually a great guy.” Her dad placed a comforting hand on Cassandra’s head of dark curls.

“It will lead to documentation agents, phone tapping to justify imprisonment without trail, death without dignity!” The man shouted.

“He sure is enthusiastic today isn’t he?” Her mother muttered as she swirled water in a clear plastic cup.

“I know you don’t like the guy, but you can’t say he’s not right.”

“Of course not, but Mr. Johnson hardly touches on the essential arguments. If the Safely Surveillance Ordinance The Circle party is pushing passes web searches, our email, our login will be in the hands of a government which once vowed to protect out rights. It wouldbe horrendous, but what is key here is that Internet activity in an invasion of your person in a way it wasn’t before. Everything is online and it equates, if not exceeds, conventional surveillance.”

“But this isn’t just theory, Sue. This is happening to us. And besides Professor Hadsworth, if you care so much about it, why didn’t you just accept their offer to speak on it? You wrote damn near half the theory.”

“Since when have protests ever prevented the inevitable?”

“Then why are you even-”

The explosion hurt Cassandra’s ears and sharp things flew in the air. Then a loud voice from one of the big green cars spoke:

“You have violated section X441 of governmental regulations, the newly instated Safely Surveillance Ordinance. This is for your own protection.” People started yelling really loud and moving really fast and Cassandra lost her dad’s hand. She remembered mom and dad said to met at the flagpole if she got lost, so she went there real quick. A man all in black with a red circle on his arm was already there. He hit people over the head with a big red stick that sparked a little until they didn’t get up.

“Hey kid, what you looking at!?!” He started to raise his red stick towards her.

“Stupid!” Another man in back with a red circle on his arm knocked the red stick away. “Are you honestly going to kill a child?”

“But I recognize her! Her parents -”

“I don’t give a shit who her parents are! The Circle needs kids for their juvenile redevelopment program.”

“Sorry, Hennery.”

“You damn well better be. Get her to the truck”

“MOMMY! DADDY!!”

“Fuck, grab her!”

Cassandra ran to her parents. Her father put his thick arms around her. She grabbed onto his hair. Her mother began to speak to the men in black with red circles on their arms.

“I have connections high up,” her mother said.

“With the Brown Party? Or even the Freedom Wings? Doesn’t matter. The Circles the only party now.”

Her mom’s hands got shaky.

“A-Alright. Well you if don’t already know, I am Professor-“

“Sue, don’t!”
“-Hadsworth. Take me in and your superiors will be most impressed. My husband and child, however, have little to do with this. Surely, Gentlemen, we can reach some sort of agreement.”

A man in black moved his stick.

“SUE!”

Cassandra threw up a little. She didn’t like the color all over her mom’s face.

“Cassie, don’t worry. Everything’s going to be okay. Close your eyes, sweetie.”

Cassie closed her eyes and heard another crack. Her father’s hair felt all damp.

“Take her.”

She opened her eyes and saw the color on her hands. She threw up a lot.

“Aw, fuck! Major! Do I really have to deal with this?”

“Fine, knock her out, just don’t scramble her brains.”

Cassandra tried to get the color off her hands by whipping it off on her overalls.

And it all went black with bits of red.

“Come on, Cass. Listen to good ol’ Mark. Twelve years in a youth reassignment center and then four years of bouncing around foster parents? You deserve micro.”

Cassandra tried to pay attention to her dealer, but it was hard to think. Everything slowed when she look laymaz (black pills shaped like a water droplets). And this time the walls were dripping an inky syrup. It crept towards her. Wait. . . did Mark say something about foster parents? When had she told him about that? Oh. The antron he sold her (a tiny bright tangerine pill the size and shape of sprinkles) last week. That made her talkative.

“Tell ya, what.” He smiled with full lime green SKKinDyed lips that contrasted slightly against his spinach SKKinDyed face. “I’ll give you the first one free. An end of summer special!”

Cassandra shook her head as the dark syrup started to creep up her ankles.

“It’s the most specialized high around. Come on. All I have to do is install one little port on your neck that hooks up to your brain. Then I put in this microchip,” He took something grey and luminous out of his pocket and spun it between his forefingers. “It sends specialized electrical pulses to your brain and bam! You’ve got the best high around!”

No, no, no, no. It looked weird. Too shinny. She liked pills. Only pills.

“You’ve gotta branch out if you want the best, Cass.”

The syrup reached her shins when she saw a man in the corner. He shook his hands violently. She couldn’t help but imagine him placing those hands around her throat.

“What you lookin’ at Cass?” Mark turned around and looked at the man Cassandra stared at. “You stressin’ ‘bout him? Don’t. He’s just waving his hands to work his hub gloves. You worried about him busting you? Don’t. He couldn’t bust you without busting himself. No one here could! This is an illegal Internet hub, everyone is in shit for just being here. But it doesn’t matter anyway because mirco is Circle approved!” Mark snapped his fingers together. The fingernails were yellow. “They even gave me this shipment!”

Not true. Not true. Circle bad. Oh, no. Black syrup getting higher.

“Oooh, you’re seeing the sap aren’t you? Don’t worry that’s just part of the high. I know you like it, but you’ll like the micro better. Come on. Try it. You’ll thank me.”

Black sticky stuff almost at her thighs.

“You know what? I’ll just set it up for, ya now.”

Huh?

He put his moist hands on her neck, and placed something that felt like rigged metal on the skin below her cropped short hair.

“Okay, this is gonna hurt the first time, but after this port is installed I promise it won’t ever again. The micro gives you any sensation you want. Soon you’ll be begging me for more. And I can provide.”

Cassandra felt the bit of metal move against her neck. Not so bad. Then the port dug into the back of her neck back like razor spider legs, twisting and contorting in her flesh.

“Cass? Cass! Breathe girl!” Mark slapped her back with one hand, while he slipped the microchip into the port with the other.

She couldn’t breathe. She wouldn’t breathe. Electricity made her seize as the as the syrup shot up between her legs.

“Don’t die, wait…. aww fuck.”

Warmth. Hurried breath. Arousal. Was this the high? She didn’t want a fucking sex simulator. That was kids stuff. Mark was wrong, she would never buy this shit. Not sober anyway. Cassandra opened her eyes.

A bleached man was over her. His penis thrusting into her open insides.

Cassandra screamed. She pushed the man off and he fell to the floor.

“Who. The. HELL ARE YOU!?!??!”

Was this one of Marks games? Drug her out and then have some guy rape her in her own place? That sick fuck. At least here she knew where her gun was. The knowledge of that kept her nausea down. She reached behind her bed and pulled the gun in front of her.

“Cass! It’s me, Jak! Don’t!”

“He, told you my name?!” Her anger grew to unimaginable heights along with her sense of violation. The acuteness of her senses, almost more than her rape, terrified her. And she knew why. She had not experienced a non-drug related emotion in five years. With this knowledge came the awareness that she, even with a gun, should not be alone with this man. Also it occurred to her that she was still naked. Gun still cocked in his direction, Cassandra covered herself with the bed sheet and edged toward the computer, she could reach anyone who was logged on, and almost dropped the gun.

This was not her computer.

Her computer was small, gray and Circle issued. Before her was a monstrous beast, black, wide with mirrored screen. A pair of Hub-Gloves hung from the side. She pressed her fingers against the veins in her right forearm and felt a slight bump, the sensor that connected the hub gloves to the unsanctioned Internet. Who had dug into her skin? The nausea hit her again, but she told herself to stay steady. She’d figure this all out when she was clothed and he was gone. Her eyes caught the date in the left corner of the screen. No, that couldn’t be right. Cassandra looked frantically to her window. Snow fell outside. Her hand holding the gun shook.

“Cassandra, baby, put the gun down.”

“You tore out my computer and changed the weather. And…” She felt her hair lightly brush her shoulders.

“And gave me extensions!”

“Oh, no. You-”

“Shut up! Put some fucking clothes on!”

The man moved to the left, picked up a cast aside boxers and a pair of black pants and dressed himself.

“Clothes on, better see?”

“And the shirt!”

He put on the long sleeved shirt that lay next to her bed.

“Where, where have I been?” she whispered.

The words escaped her mouth before she could stop them.

“It’s fucking winter,” she continued, louder this time. “I have hair, you were in my bed and the date on that computer says five months have passed. Where have I been?!”

“When I met you.” He moved closer and she pointed the gun towards his head. “Alright. I’ll stay away. But when I met you, you stole what you could to get drugs. You told me how your parents died at the First Protest at the hands of The Circle. How they forced you into a youth reassignment center. I can’t begin to imagine what that’s like.”

“Don’t you talk about them!” She released the safely, but he kept speaking.

“You told me that you wanted to change things. That you were sick off all this. That you wanted the life you couldn’t remember when you had parents. We’ve been working with Broken Cass. We’re going to over throw The Circle. We’ll have our country back.”

Cassandra didn’t think should could hold up her arms anymore.

“And what about my memory and you, huh?” She began again. “What right do you have to fuck me??”

“I love you. And I think The Circle altered your memory because you work with Broken. Otherwise you’d know that you love me too.”

Cassandra’s voice shook.

“I-I want some proof.”

“That you love me? I don’t know how-”

“Not that! Broken!”

“Oh. Well, it’s about time. We can go.”

“Go where?”

“To the Broken meeting. You wanted evidence, and this is the best kind really.”

Cassandra realized she still only dressed in a bed sheet. “You wait outside.”

He walked across the room, opened and then shut the door. Cassandra put on some clothes on the floor that she didn’t recognize. They fit her well. As she opened the apartment door, she had the strange sensation of something falling off the back of her neck, though she wore no necklace. The man called Jak stepped in quickly to grab his jacket and something shinny off the floor. Probably his keys. Cassandra declined to wear his jacket or get one for herself. After walking several blocks in falling snow, when she began to seriously regret not grabbing a jacket, Jak subconsciously reached for her hand. Cassandra drew back. She shivered from more than the cold.

When they reached the last of liquor stores and dive bars, passing several persons, Jak took her down a narrow alley and where a sign of a beer mug flashed in the middle of the wall. Her eyes searched for an entrance; Jak pointed down. Oh. An underground bar. He opened the wooden basement doors, releasing a flood of warmth and smoke. Tentatively, Cassandra stepped in. An overweight white man who looked to be in his fifties talked expressively to a thin, young black woman while she nodded impassively and looked steadily more and more annoyed. An Asian kid in his late teens with spiky green hair and clad in black peeled paint off the table. A sickly looking Indian boy who didn’t look more than twelve muttered something about how paint didn’t come free. The source of smoke was a pipe held between the lips of an unmemorable brown woman of indeterminate age and nationality. The brown woman kissed the black woman on the cheek as she walked to the back of the basement, whether romantic or maternal in nature Cassandra couldn’t tell. Though physically unremarkable, Cassandra found herself drawn to the brown woman the most.

“Cass-ulah!” Shouted the cubby man with the trace of an Irish accent. He ran to her across the room and then stopped and gave her a once over.

“Jesus, where’s your jacket? Jak why didn’t you give her yours? And speaking of that rouge,” the man nudged her suggestively. “Looks like neither of you got much sleep last night, eh?”

“The private affairs of our members are non of our concern Donovan.” Said the stoic black woman, through she winked at Cassandra out of the corner of her eye.

“Oh lighten up Sirree, it’s all in good fun!”

“Why didn’t you tell us?” The voice came from the Asian boy who didn’t stop pealing the paint off the table, even as he talked. “Broken needs to know if you’ll be unavailable for contact.”

“Walter tried to call you last night. You didn’t pick up. He was upset.” The Indian preteen blew his nose after finishing speaking.

“Upset! I suppose you could call it that, Rahul. Or you could say he pinned over his lady fair!” Donovan raised his arms and tiled his head back dramatically.

Siree arched an eyebrow. “What does harassing a colleague accomplish?”

“I don’t pine!” shouted Walter, his cheeks flushing.

“Well, come on Cass! Tell us how ol’ Jakky boy was!”

Cassandra opened and closed her mouth, but no words came out. Jak put a hand on her shoulder and she slapped it away.

A silence filled the room and Walter stopped pealing the paint.

“No so great?” Donovan suggested in a small voice.

Jak laughed loudly and awkwardly. Why didn’t he just say something? Why didn’t she?

“You have something to speak of.” It was not a question and it came from the brown woman’s mouth, her eyes fixed on Cassandra.

Cassandra looked at every one of them, trying to find familiarly in faces, bodies, and expressions. There was none. “I don’t remember any of this,” Cassandra stumbled out.

“No!” cried Donavan, aghast.

“Nothing at all?” Walter’s asked.

Sirree massaged her temped with slender fingers. “Another memory loss? The Circle has been busy.” She turned to the brown woman. “That’s six in this chapter in one month alone, Morah. We can’t take much more of this.”

“Well,” started Jak as he tried to simile. “Why don’t we debrief her?”

“Why should we?” Rahul hacked out his words as he coughed. “She’s not the same person. What good would it even do?”

Sirree and Donovan looked as though they agreed but didn’t want to say it.

“How can even ask that?” Walter interjected. “Of course she’s still Cassandra!”

“She seems . . . different.” Rahul squinted his eyes and studied her.

“Cassandra,” the brown woman repeated. “Do you want to know?”

Cassandra felt pain, fear. She didn’t want to know anything. But what else would she do? Go back to the Internet hub and get high? Stay at a government sanctioned apartment she got five years ago for reporting the address of an illegal hub just like it? And then she the image of her parents flashed into her mind. She remembered the color that had stained her hands.

“Could you use me?”

“We did before.”

There was unease in the room as Walter glared at everyone except Cassandra.

Sirree looked at Morah , and the brown woman nodded to her. Siree began:

“During the mouths you were with us you revealed knowledge about The Circle, including one of their major weakness: they have ruled out the efficiency of hub gloves. Hub gloves enable more improvisational movement in Cyberspace, giving us the advantage. While keyboards are arguably superior in programming, in the game-”

“By ‘game’ she means the resistance against The Circle,” Walter intervened.

“Yes.” Sirree continued, slightly perturbed. “Hub gloves can achieve an instantaneous array of movement. Typing can achieve this as well, but your WPM has to be beyond excellent, thus limiting who can play the game. Hub gloves not only allow improved game play, but provide a wider variety of players, including more amateur ones, to partake in it. At first, this did not matter because we could not break through The Circle’s defenses. Then you provided the code, but could not reveal your source. We plan,” She stopped, sighed and paused. “We planned to play, erm attack, two weeks from today, if not sooner. But considering your present condition, things may have to be delayed.”

“But the code will expire,” Jak interrupted

Others in the group nodded.

Madran looked steadily at everyone. And then at Cassandra.

“We could retrain her. She took to it real fast the first time.” Walter suggested hopefully.

“It looks like we must try.” Morah blew out the words of her mouth with another puff of smoke.

Walter handed her a pair of Hub Gloves.

“What do you remember about these?”

“You use them?”

“Well, yes-”

Rahul pushed Walter aside. “ “You see these pads on the gloves?” He pointed. Green was on the palms of the left glove, blue on the back, red on the back of the right glove and-

Rahul pulled the gloves away and wiped away sweat on his brow. “The colors are just for show. To help beginners remember. They vary based upon the glove, anyway. The gloves for serious players are all black. They detect multiple sensors you can place all over your body. We all have these sensors, even you, but we’ll keep you on the colored gloves. When you have the black gloves on, if someone manages to unravel your data, you die in both planes. But your maneuverability with black gloves is fifty fold that of colored ones. We all use this when we go against The Circle. Enough back-story. Put them on.”

Cassandra’s hands were klutzy and the colors confused her, but Rahul was surprisingly an efficient, if harsh, teacher. Sirree paced and made frustrated noises, but massaged Cassandra’s hands at the end of the day. Donovan told her jokes to make her feel better and Walter got her some soup from the MEalMach-inO!!!, a strange looking box in the corner of the room. Jak wanted to practice on his own, but Morah shook her head. Siree explained Morah didn’t want anyone leaving or even going online without complete Broken surveillance, until the game was played. But Jak begged and got a few seconds to check his email. He stared and smiled at Cassandra the rest of the time. She hated it. Maybe it would have been different if he hadn’t met him how she did. He did say he loved her. She tried to think of him better when she walked home in the snow. He did have a nice smile. As she opened the door to her apartment, she felt warmer then when she had left it earlier today, but perhaps that was because Walter had lend her his coat.

She took off the coat and turned her thoughts to all of the Broken members, their vibrant personalities and, with the exception of the brown girl and Jak, their distinct nationalities. The Circle did their best to get rid of all non-government regulated groups and race was the first to go. A skin bleaching was free to all citizens and required for all juvenile reassignment participants. You could pay extra for coloring your skin (though dying it natural colors was discouraged, if not outright condemned). Several citizens prided themselves on identifying race regardless of skin tone, but not the juv kids. Few had ever grown up associating skin tone, face structure and nationality together. She stared resentfully at her bleached skin, so similar to Jak’s. Why in the world would he have bleached it if he hadn’t been in a reassignment program? If she had ever had any color in her skin she would have kept it.

While she mused, Cassandra practiced checking her email with the hub glove. One was unread. She waved her left purple index finger to the right and the email opened, but she moved it too far to the right, and it flew into the trash, depicted on her screen as a little dinosaur. The email looked like spam so she didn’t need to open it, but Cassandra knew she needed the practice. She pointed to the dinosaur icon again with her purple finger and then and then opened her palm quickly, revealing the green underside of the glove. The little dinosaur opened its mouth and spit out the email she had just deleted out. She prepared to open the email (Which by the word “EnLARGEeement!!!!” in the title she now knew to be spam) when a light blue line flicked once across her screen. Cassandra recalled from her training that day that the appearance of a blue line meant a file been deleted, usually by a glitch, but on occasion by a rushed or amateur hack. Proud of the recollection, Cassandra tapped the red pad on the back of her right hand, and then waved her left hand. The deleted file appeared and started to blink yellow. During each blink, Cassandra rubbed her ring and thumb finger together until the file jostled and finally opened. She wasn’t the best at this, so it only opened for a second. Cassandra read it, grabbed Walter’s coat and fled the room. The words seared into her mind:

“We are pleased to hear that as a result of the micro The Circle has been infiltrated so effectively. Please contact your dealer again. He will give you more information.”

Cassandra ran down a route she knew by heart, flicking the snow out of her eyes, to the illegal Internet hub where she’d taken the micro forgotten months ago. The steel door opened with a clank! and immediately she saw Mark, but he looked different. His unusual green complexion always seemed exotic to her, almost appealing. She thought she might have slept with him one while on corma, (a slim and dark crimson pill). But now she saw a strange, chameleon-like creature with obscenely large lips and unpleasant bulging eyes. His floral print shirt felt artificial against her arms as she gripped him round the throat.

“What do you know about mirco?” she questioned evenly, counteracting her rage-burning eyes. Mark’s body could be compared to a chameleon as well, large in the middle, with short arms and legs and lack-luster muscle tone. Cassandra loosened her hands around his throat so he could speak.

“What do you mean?” he gasped out, high pitched and abrasive. Not the slick, seductive tone she remembered.

“I will kill you here if you do not tell me everything.”

His green skin paled.

“Alright, Alright! I told you I got the stuff form The Circle, and they told me to give it to everyone I could, especially you. When everyone else took it they looked a little weird, but nothing big. When you took it you looked up at me and you were . . well, you were you, but there was something else in there. And your eyes. They turned grey. And every time you seemed more like you less . . . haunted you took more of the micro. But before that, when you hadn’t taken the mirco in awhile, you looked like you were, you were -”

“As if I was what?”

“Fighting. To stay awake.”

“Where’s the micro?”

“I was supposed to get in shipment last week, but it was delayed. That’s probably why you woke up. I was supposed to tell you that they had to take alternate means and they place it under your bed with combination 54962.”

Cassandra mentally imprinted the numbers into her mind and sprinted back to her place, skidding on ice and sleet as she ran. Under her bed lay a safe she never had, of course, seen before. She entered the number, heard a click, and the safe popped open. Microchips lay inside, innocent and unassuming. She picked one up and felt for the port in the back of her neck. No pain filled her when she slid it into the back of her neck, but she felt the seductive call of sleep.

No! Stay awake! But soon the sensation transformed from alluring to agonizing. If she didn’t fall asleep soon, she’d pass out from the pain.

“Where are they?!” Cassandra shouted, hoping that words would keep her awake, but her own voice only sent more searing stabs into the base of her skull. Objects flew through the air while she tore her apartment apart. Finally, she clawed up a lose floorboard and saw the baggie of trieppe (electric blue tablets shaped like bullets). Cassandra threw every last one down her throat. The pain continued, but Cassandra no longer felt the pull of sleep. Half a dozen amphetamines will keep a girl awake. She steadied herself and looked into the reflective surface of her computer.

Her eyes were grey.

And her mouth began to move of its own accord.

“ We did not believe you would discover the amphetamine counteraction. Then we did not believe you would gain full control,” The voice speaking was her own.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN MY HEAD?”

“Existing. I’m a complex A.I. intelligence. Sent here by the programming on the specialized Mirco chips your dealer provides. We needed a very specific chemical type for it to correspond effectively with, else wise I would not be able to take full control. You fit that type. Several were dispersed amount the populace hoping one A.I. haunting a human could infiltrate Broke. None we as successful as you.” A pause. “Us. The Circle knew Broken would trust a sympathetic character, so your believable tragedy was an unexpected plus. The eyes color is a strange side effect that we cannot quite figure out the root of. You are about to ask why I am telling you this. Your personality type is calmed by answers and explanations and I do not want my host to experience hysteria again. It makes the rebooting process difficult.”

Cassandra immediately tried to make herself more hysterical.

“That won’t work.” The A.I. with her voice replied.

“Why did you sleep with him?” she stumbled out frantically, but calmer than before. The machine was right. Answers did cool her down.

“Ah. Intercourse with the bleached gangly man. We owe him, he works for us. Recently, he acquired the mirco that fell out of your neck port when you awoke free from my influence. He also deleted the email that The Circle recently sent. If you’re curious, he’s bleached because that’s required to work with us. But it doesn’t matter. You will depart this body soon enough.”

“What?”

“We have enough information to end the Broken threat. You won’t be forgotten though. When the micro puts my data into your system, it fills up with your data, memories to be exact. It’s why you have no recollection of these past months when I was in control. These memories, edited of course, will inspire future generations. Now that you are disposable, we will extract all of your memories, which will inherently imply your bodily death. Please try to calm yourself. You will experience some slight hallucinations. Have a nice day.”

Cassandra punched the computer screen, slicing her hands with the delicate material. She looked at the color on her hands. Not red, but the color of static. The static flooded her vision as her blood pounded faster, slowed, and then stopped.

Memories. They flashed across her screen. She looked from it into her room and witnessed her bloodied corpse. She would have screamed if he had lungs, but she felt no anger. She would have cried if she had eyes, but she felt no sadness. She objectively deduced, that this lack of emotions was beneficial in the long run. It would enable her to think clearer. But she felt no need to reach any conclusions. Deducing that inaction was a waste of a highly original, and as of yet unheard of, sentient life, she decided to try and find what might engage her. She scanned the memories and saw her father read to her in her youth. (Though she now fully realized he could not be her biological father. He had a cleft chin, a dominant trait. She believed her former manifest self had learned this long ago and tried to forget it.) Stories interested her then. Seeing her life as a story, she felt compelled to finish it. The characters in Broken seemed valuable for diversity and slight comic relief. She would keep them. Jak betrayed her. The government had killed her parents. While they provided, a conflict, she was looking for an conclusion, not a sequel. She would lose them. But how?

There were several unnamed characters in her story. Ones her former manifest self had passed on streets, seen in hubs. They were uninteresting. She could get rid of them. Data clicked. She understood now how to conclude her story. She attempted to reach her data out, but found a problem inherent. Though she suspected the government had never thought she would function as a separate entity, they had set up a highly advanced barrier between herself and the Internet. How to break it? She again recalled stories. She remembered symbolism. It helped simplify otherwise complex issues. She looked at the barrier and the data stream outside of it. She saw data as blood. Herself as a virus. The Internet as an immune system body. How simple. She multiplied herself inside her computer, feeling her consciousness expand. The excess of data burst the barrier. She was free in the data stream, the blood. This maneuver would have been impossible if operating with a hub glove or keyboard. Fascinating.

She moved easily among the blood, multiplying as she went and found the heart of it. There the heart, the government database that controlled virtually all, beat. A few viruses native to this part of the system struck out at her, but she easily over took them with her multiplication. She multiplied around the heart beat in select areas. Data pulled from news sources informed her of the results. (She was unsure how to incorporate this into the immune system metaphor. Perhaps she should have picked a subject she knew more about.) Aircrafts crashed, hospitals lost power, the statistics of the recently dead were increasing. She left evidence implicating The Circle. The citizens, believing The Circle had done this, would band together and overthrow them. She was already receiving this conclusion from email surveillance. Fascinating. Not what Broken wanted specifically, but an act appropriate to the title of the group.

Then Broken advanced, an interesting development. She could recognize their attacks by their data streams, more creative, more sophisticated, but still no real threat. If she multiplied in a direct stream she could attack each one specifically. The Irishman was the most amusing character. She would terminate him for dramatics. His data signature fizzled out. She decided to terminate no others, someone needed to tell her tale. Jak, of course, was missing, so she could not conclude him. And she then wondered what to do next. She scanned her memories. According to them, her former manifest self would have wanted, at this point to die. This was no longer possible, not only because to die one needed a fleshy form, but because she could no longer wanted anything at all. Nevertheless, she could end. The data stream of the Asian boy with facial scars appeared before her. By analyzing her memories she determined that in their interactions, he had expressed a combination of carnal desire and comradery for her or, rather, the her the A.I. provided. Some labeled these two feelings in conjunction as a complex emotion she did not care to analyze at this point in time. She let him hack into her system, destroying her all she was, files of memories, bits of data. It was a fitting end and she contemplated that perhaps her former manifest self would have been glad for a rest not tainted in black and red.