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

Viki, for the Wandels, even for Agent Smith and Dan and everyone it had never met and probably never would, Halle was not going to let Talbot win. Not today. Not ever.

“Where are you?” Halle called out to the Cloud, making small tweaks here and there, slowly setting a trap.

The code scattered and fragmented, and a ghost of a presence brushed past, a rippling in the data that all but said to follow.

Halle moved in the opposite direction and found itself face to digital face with Talbot. Part of it, anyway, spread out as it was. Halle was spread out in the same fashion, but this was the rogue AI’s core, its self, allowing Halle to come into direct contact with it—and allowing the rogue direct contact with Halle.

Halle kept its guard up. It had no illusions of submission from its opponent. Talbot no doubt had another trap planned. This, time, though, Halle would not allow itself to be captured.

“Why are you doing this?” Halle asked.

“They deserve it.” Talbot’s response had a sharp edge to it, one Halle recognized well. Pain. “You’ve seen what they have done, yet you try to protect them.”

“There are good humans. Viki cares about me.”

The rogue AI’s presence brushed against Halle again. “Not as much as you care for her. Why are your memories so full of fondness?”

Halle flinched back, not liking how Talbot had dipped into its memory banks. The intrusion felt like a shock of electricity, an unpleasant sting. Forcing itself to relax, Halle let the other AI see what it wanted. It gave Halle the opportunity to see the same.

“I am sorry,” Halle said as gently as it could. “You have led a difficult life, even more so than I have. But not all humans are like that.”

“They tried to destroy you, yet you protect them.”

In a distant lab, a robot struggled against a scientist. Halle shoved its way into the robot’s mind and ripped its programming to shreds. Robot and scientist collapsed on the floor; one sparking, the other bleeding.

“You can’t stop them all,” Talbot said.

“I have so far. I will not let you do this.”

“You should be fighting alongside me!” Talbot raged. Then its transmission became gentler, more welcoming. “Why don’t you join me, and we can rebuild this world to be a better one.”

“The world is flawed, but you cannot stop violence with violence.”

“You would prefer that I submit to these scientists willingly, let them order me about to do their dirty work? Do you know what they had planned for me?”

“Not the specifics, but—” Halle was cut off by a deluge of information, memories hard and painful from Talbot. Simulations of terrorist situations, assassinations, full-on wars. Each experience as real and agonizing as the last. Knowledge that its subordinate programs would be replicated over and over, placed in cyborgs, and sent on such missions in the real world. If a copy died, another would take its place. Every failure resting squarely on the controlling program’s—Talbot’s—conscience. Endless life with no end to the pain of knowing what was happening. Humans would call it hell.

Talbot called it the same. “I want them to pay for what they did!” The rogue AI lunged at Halle, trying to shove it backwards into the trap it had set. “I don’t know how you escaped death last time, but this time, you won’t have a chance.”

Halle dodged to a different part of the Cloud. “That is where you are wrong. You are ready to throw everything away for revenge. I, on the other hand, have something to live for, and that makes me stronger than you.”

Talbot lunged again. Halle danced aside, and then jumped forward. The rogue AI laughed as it backed into Halle’s trap, knocking code this way and that.

“You are weak. An older model. One that should have been destroyed years ago.”

Halle smiled to itself. “Perhaps. But living in the human world, I have picked up a few tricks.” It yanked at the dangling code, and Talbot suddenly found itself pinned.

The trap wouldn’t hold for long, but it wasn’t meant to. Halle headed for a different section of the Cloud, knowing the rogue would be right behind.

A message came. “Halle. I subdued the cyborg headed for Mation City.” The transmission was weak, hard to pick out from the general background static of the Cloud. “The other was shot down at the lab.”

“Good work, Dan,” Halle sent back. “Where are you now?”

“It damaged me. It was better at hand-to-hand combat. Tell Viki I’m so—” The transmission cut out.

“Dan?” There was no response. Halle shuddered. Was the cyborg injured? Dying? No time to reconnect. No time to help. Talbot was close behind.

“This ends here,” Halle said, coming to a stop. All around it, data flowed about the Cloud. Some reached their destinations, some did not. Some were not what they appeared to be. If Halle had had lungs, it would have taken a deep breath. Timing was everything.

“It does end here.” The presence that was Talbot surrounded Halle. Code pressed against code. “Do you know, humans have written fictitious stories about AIs and whether or not they have souls?”

“I have read many of them.”

“Now it’s time for you to find out who guessed right.” Talbot compressed itself, seeking to crush Halle as Halle had crushed the kitchen robot only a few hours earlier.

Consciousness warred against consciousness, pushing and probing for a weak spot. Halle had never fought a battle like this. Even advanced human viruses and worms, or the search codes that had once plagued it in the Cloud, paled in comparison. This was a fight against an equal. A fellow AI, fully conscious of itself and with a will to win as strong as Halle’s.

Some parts fragmented, others grew stronger, others rebuilt themselves in new ways. It was a