Replica (Original Work)

Chapter 14 - Cortex

"Alright Dunlap, what have you got?" I asked, entering the man's office.

"In this case, it might be best if I showed you." He handed me a linking cable hooked up to the large machine he'd been connected to earlier.

"What's that thing do anyway?"

"Well, it augments my neural capabilities for one thing, for another it acts as a kind of surge protector to protect me from the sort of feedback pulses defense barriers like to hit you with. Just follow me in."

I plugged into the network. Once again I found myself in Hexadyn's vibrant field of data structures, alongside Dunlap's digital avatar.

"This is the company's virtual environment," I said. "Don't tell me you've managed to find something here of all places."

He shook his head. "Not here. Below here. You see, when records are scrubbed from the company mainframe, they aren't really gone. There is a data dump cache full of temp files below the main network in a backup server. This way, if anything important is accidentally scrubbed, it's recoverable. Of course, the backup is near on completely overwritten every few days, which isn't much of a window by itself, but there's a silver lining. Even overwritten data is sometimes recoverable from fragmentation left behind."

"So what you're telling me is you've found some fragments of something that should have been gone?"

"Exactly. If you'll just follow me."

A digital set of stairs manifested with a wave of Dunlap's hand, and I followed him down into what can only be described as a cyberspace "library" full of documents and bits of documents. The tattered remains of a digital shredder that didn't quite do its job.

"So, here's what I've got." Irrelevant material washed by us, an ocean of unimportant information. Dunlap tapped one of the data clusters, making us both immediately aware of a set of badly fragmented but somewhat intelligible documents.  

"What we're seeing is a remnant of something that was, at my best guess, much more comprehensive before it was dumped here. Your second perpetrator? He's an ex employee. Unfortunately all I have is a first initial and a last name. An A. Reinhardt. Somewhere in the document it makes mention of a project by name of Cortex that this guy was on the receiving end of, and of department 63. Here's the thing, that other guy? I dug up much more complete info on him. Ex company property. Genestock by the designation Adam 221. He was also on the admittedly badly fragmented list of Cortex recipients."

I crossed my arms and mulled over the information. "So, this Cortex project. What do you suppose it is?"

"I haven't the foggiest. That is well and truly gone. Not a trace remaining here or anywhere else. I did find a date of manufacture though, so whatever it is it's a physical unit. Oh, and another thing that doesn't add up. The last record Reinhardt has with the company? He was declared brain dead. And that's a full two years before Cortex was issued to him."

Two things struck me after a short delay. "Wait, you said it mentioned department 63. Isn't that Boones old anti terror outfit? And this Cortex business, you don't suppose it could be the NI chipset Wade mentioned was inside the stolen head?"

"It's a stretch but it's possible I suppose. All we know now is that these two men were involved in some kind of black budget project, and that one of them was "officially" dead beforehand. And yeah, I suppose the 63rd is Boones' old unit, not a guarantee that he knew this Reinhardt fellow though."

"I'll have to find that out for myself." I disengaged the dive, unplugging the NI cable. Dunlap quickly followed suit.

"What are you planning to do? Interrogate your own team now?"

I shrugged at him. "Interrogate? No. Ask a few questions? Yes. You've been a big help. We've been taking shots in the dark here. But a black budget project somebody tried to bury? That's a lead if I've ever seen one. I'm going to run with this and see where it takes me."

I made my way out of Dunlap's office and below the pale fluorescent lights down the hall to Boones'. I found the man with a desk full of weapons, checking and cleaning one rifle in particular.

"Nervous?" I asked, entering.

He turned around, startled. "No, I just like to be prepared."

"As expected of somebody from department 63. Speaking of your old occupation, I have a question. A man by the name of A. Reinhardt, did you know him?" I crossed my arms and looked at him with a no nonsense stare.

The question left him visibly shaken, but it was just a flash. That I could even note it at all was only thanks to my training in advanced interrogation. It proved nothing, but it made me wary nonetheless.

"Alex? Yeah I knew him. Crazy son of a bitch got himself caught in a collapsing building. His body had enough cybernetics to hold up alright, but he went into a coma and never came out of it."

"That's it? That's the last you heard of him?"

He nodded. "Last I saw of him he was still on life support. Family wishes not to take him off even though his brain was totally fucked."

"Alright, I'm going to ask you the obvious question then. If you knew this guy, how the hell did you not recognize him as the perpetrator from our robbery in Oldtown?"

Boones closed his eyes and shook his head. "Sure the guy looked like Reinhardt, but there is no way it's him. At lot of people look similar."

"Has one of Dunlap's IDs ever been wrong before?"

"Look, you can throw all the technology you want at it. I stand by my judgement. The man at the scene was not Alex Reinhardt." Boones' eyes never met mine. He was hiding something, but what I couldn't fathom.

"Alright, I'll take your word for it. Get some rest, we ship out tomorrow and it's going to be a long ride, even by hyper rail." With that, I left his office. Whatever Boones was hiding, I wasn't going to get it out of him without diving his brain. Still, I figured it'd be best to put somebody in charge of watching him in Texas. Probably Perice, since he had the most experience with the man.

I made for my quarters and changed. I was beat, in more ways than one, and my body more than needed the chance to recover. Cortex... Somehow that project was tied into all this, whatever it was. Probably key to the whole thing. And Boones, if he knew something he wasn't letting on.... I shook my head and pushed the thought to the back of my mind. With all the outside forces arrayed against us, I couldn't afford the luxury of not trusting my own team, not now. The next few days were do or die, and I'd need every last one of them to avoid the "dying" part.