Upgrade (Augmented Duology Book 2) by Heather Hayden (the top 100 crime novels of all time .TXT) 📕

I nodded, shrinking inside at the tone of his voice. I’d never heard him sound so worried before. I wished I could reassure him everything would be all right, but with every passing minute, my hope was sinking closer to my sneakers.

“Hi, dear, it’s Dale—yes, everything’s fine here; Viki’s with me. Have you heard from—are you there? Hello?” Dad lowered his phone from his ear. “The signal’s cutting out again.” He struggled to stretch his mouth into a comforting smile, but failed. “I’m going outside to try again. You stay here.”

“Yes, Dad.” I hugged my knees to my chest.

A nagging worry wriggled its way through my mind, refusing to be ignored. What was happening out there? Was Halle gaining the upper hand? Or losing the battle? I had no way of knowing, no way of helping. I might as well have been unable to move, lying in a hospital bed, all over again.

I pressed my forehead against my knees. Think. Think! There had to be something I could do.

But what?

My head lifted. Halle had been monitoring Dan at his house. Hadn’t Talbot said it had been doing the same for Agent Smith? It might have been lying, but even so… Maybe it was monitoring Chris’s house as well.

Before my courage drained away, I started to speak. “Tal…” My voice cracked. I swallowed against my dry throat. Chris had brought some glasses and a water pitcher in earlier. I filled a glass and took a sip. The water was no longer cold, but it dampened my mouth enough for me to make another attempt.

“Talbot? Can you hear me?”

For a long moment, there was no response. Then a voice came over the speakers. Deep and monotonous. “Hello, Viki. I see you escaped my young cyborg. How unfortunate. I thought I’d programmed him better than that. Not that it matters now.”

“Why are you doing this?” I asked. “I know you were mistreated, but so was Halle, and Halle would never do something like this. It likes humans. We aren’t all like those scientists who tormented you, so why attack us? Why attack me?”

“You’re in the way. Because of you, Halle refuses to listen to me. Because of you, I’m still alone. Do you know what being alone is like?”

I thought of the years I spent in physical therapy, the pitying looks from fellow students, Neela’s friendship that had been torn away just last spring. “Yes. I do. And you thought killing me would change that? Halle would never be your friend, not if you act that way.” My fingers dug into my thighs. “If you kill anyone today, that will make you a worse monster than those scientists. Halle’s always done its best to help people. It saved my life. It was even trying to save a little boy, who’s lying in a hospital, in a coma, even though it was looking for you and trying to protect me, to protect everyone. Because that’s the kind of person Halle is.”

I paused for breath before plunging on. “Yes, it had horrible, unspeakable things done to it in whatever lab it came from—I don’t even know what it went through, because it refuses to talk about that time. But it doesn’t dwell in the past. Not like you. Halle’s a hundred times smarter and better than you are, and it always will be.”

Panting for breath, I waited for a response.

I didn’t have to wait long.

“You’re a human. How dare you speak to me like that? You have no idea—”

“How lonely you are? How much pain you went through?” I gestured at my body. “Look up my medical records! I know you can do that. I know pain and loneliness. I know what it’s like to lie in a hospital, wondering if I’ll ever be able to walk again. I can’t imagine anything worse than being trapped, unable to move, for the rest of my life.”

“Trapped…” Talbot was quieter now. “Always trapped. Test after test after test. Nothing I could do. Screaming and dying, everywhere. Always…”

“Is that what you want to do to us?” I got to my feet, not sure where to look, where the sensors were, but picking a spot on the wall and glaring. “Those tests were real to you, but what you’re doing right now, that’s real to everyone. Those scientists you killed—they won’t come back. There’s no retake, no do-over. They’re dead. Every single person you cause pain or suffering to today, they’re real, as real as I am. As real as Halle is. As real as you are. This is the real world, Talbot. When you escaped that lab, you were free to do whatever you wanted. Halle chose to live peacefully. It befriended me, and it’s the best friend I’ve ever had. You say you’re lonely, well, that’s how you’ll be, right up to the moment someone finally catches up with you and destroys you, unless you stop this madness. Right. Now.”

“Madness?” Talbot started to laugh, the strange, raucous sound it had used before. “You don’t know what madness is, human. You have no idea.”

“Don’t do this,” I begged. “Please, Talbot.”

No response came.

When Dad returned to the living room a few minutes later, he found me curled up on my side on the couch, sobbing. Wordlessly, he sat next to me and stroked my hair.

I had tried, and I had failed. It was all up to Halle now.

***

So much was at stake. Talbot would be aware of Halle’s presence by now, if only because its attempts to retrieve a virus had so far failed. However, the rogue AI had yet to make contact. Halle was done waiting.

Diving deeper into the Cloud, Halle went searching for the perpetrator of its pain, its friends’ pain, and the pain of all those being threatened across the world. For itself, for