Pulse

Chapter 11 - Mindjacked

Tapping noises. Scratching. Scraping sounds. Voices. Whispers. Tiny creatures scuttling around inside his head. Inside his head. They were trying to get inside. They were trying to drive him insane.

Adam knew this would happen, but the attacks attempting to invade his mindspace were far more sophisticated than anything he'd encountered before. He gave up trying to block the attacks, and following the priciples of Aikido, adapted to them in a way that diffused their power.

He created a safezone within his mind – unreachable, untouchable, impenetrable. A sanctuary much like the Inner Sanctum of the Glasshouse itself. Inside the Chair room. Tucked away. Out of sight. And still, they found him. The damned Scraper bots found him. They were relentless, twisting and wriggling through firewall software like woodworm through soft pine.

The more he entrained his brain to deflect the psychological attacks, the more distant they became. Quieter. Ignorable. Tolerable. Adam hoped that he could maintain his mental strength long enough to see the mission through to its conclusion, whatever that conclusion was.

In the meantime, he remained hooked up to the Chair with an IV drip in his arm and micro-sensors stuck to his temples and bare chest. A skullcap covered his scalp, tiny lights blinking in sync with his brain activity. Fibre optic cables relayed his thoughts and commands up to the biodome's rooftop satlink antenna and a hacked microsat nebula fed the encrypted data packets via the Filter directly to Grace's built-in micro-antenna network.

Along the way, barriers were swept aside and new pathways constructed within seconds, silently, efficiently, without trace. That's what made the presence of Scrapers so mysterious and even unnerving. Someone or something somewhere must know of his current location and if he wasn't where he was, he'd probably already be dead.

Room temperature in the Chair room was comfortable and the lights were low. Anything to keep Adam from experiencing even the most subtle distractions. Drexle sat in front of a bank of holoscreens monitoring the readouts, occasionally tapping and swiping at the projected information as he saw fit. Elena had come in from the lush Inner Sanctum core and was standing over Adam as if he was on his deathbed.

Seeing him like this, and knowing how difficult this was for him, made her realize how much her confrontation with him was built on superficial defence mechanisms. Everyone was fragile. They'd all been through a heck of a lot. And if this mission was even remotely successful, providing a glimmer of hope to all the people out there, freemechs and humans alike, then maybe, just maybe, the burnt out bridge between them could be patched up, if not fully repaired.

She could see that happening. It would take monumental forgiveness on her part, but she wasn't beyond entertaining such herculean efforts. A single tear crawled down her cheek. She'd give it a try, she thought. It was the least she could do for Nikolai's sake.

"How is he?" Elena asked Drexle.

Drexle turned around to face Elena, surprised. "Oh hi. I didn't see you come in. He's doing incredibly well, considering it's his first time in the Chair. Some involuntary movements, but nothing to worry about. Heart rate, blood pressure, normal. It's like he was born for this," said Drexle, genuinely impressed.

"Maybe he was," said Elena wiping her tears, reluctantly acknowledging that Adam was indeed uniquely gifted in this area of expertise. In fact, Adam was the only person alive that could do what he was doing right now. Without him, Grace would not have her upgrades and the mission to disable the ALMA unit and the Blade's Svalinn shield system would be a lost cause.

The Voice had made it clear (through ommission) that there was no backup plan, no magical plan B that the Freemech-Human Alliance could fall back on if plan A (the only possible plan) were to fail. And failure to execute would mean that the extended war was lost, the Earthbound humans, the Sick, would suffer rapid extinction, and the remaining Freemechs would shut down, having no further purpose.