Quantum Cultivation by Jace Kang (simple e reader TXT) 📕

For the rest of the ride, she looked out the windows, searching for flashes from the MoD assassins’ stun guns. Buildings familiar from images she’d seen zipped by.

“We’re almost there,” said Officer Perez. “I—”

He placed his hand on his ear, then jerked his head to look out the window. “I don’t see any bogies.”

Bogey? Was it Ryusuke? Aya grabbed his arm. “What’s wrong?”

“Negative,” the Peacekeeper said, ignoring her. “Tell them we have the Elestrae, and a couple…. What?”

“What’s wrong?” Aya asked.

Officer Perez turned and stared at her, but spoke into his communicator implant. “They’re wrong. The woman’s name is Hiromi Johnson, not Aya Oyama.”

Shit. Whoever he was talking to knew her real name, but for now, didn’t realize it was her.

An explosion rocked the hovercraft, sending Aya and Officer Perez lurching forward. In the back, Kentaro cried out, a sign that the biobed’s inertial dampeners weren’t helping to keep him stable.

“Dammit!” Officer Perez said. “They fired on us!”

“Who?” Aya demanded, though she had a good idea it was…

“A Ministry of Defense gunship.”

Probably only a warning shot. The next one would likely end their trip, which in turn meant Kentaro wouldn’t get the help he needed. She put her hand on her head, pretending to have hit it. “I think I hit my head. I…”

She slumped forward in her seat, then jacked into the EtherCloud. Unlike the gunship that had attacked Teppin, this one’s connection was crawling with Level Seven Sentinels. Even with her best cloaks and Shells, she could never get past them…

Except with Slash’s code. If it could delay a Level Nine Sentinel for two seconds, it would give her two hundred seconds against a Level Seven—a virtual eternity in real time. It would also mean never being able to hack MoD EtherSpaces ever again.

Still, that would be the same outcome if she fell into their hands now. Not to mention, Kentaro might die if he were jostled any more.

Thank goodness for the lack of physiological reaction, because as much as her brain warned her this was a bad idea, especially after the earlier incident, she didn’t feel it in her nerves. She activated the code, then jumped to the datalink.

The Level Sevens paid her no mind. With her virtual picks, she used codes to unlock the encryption. The door to the gunship opened. Malicious code meant to attack her Avatar specifically lurked just beyond the port, resembling a Tengu.

Cloaked as she was by Slash’s code, it paid her no mind, and she slipped past it. The EtherSpace looked exactly like the one that had joined in the attack on Teppin, so she zipped over to the control partition. Along the way she passed more Tengu, their red horns shining as she’d programmed their appearance in her SI. To think, Ryusuke had probably seen real Tengu in the World of Rivers and Lakes.

They ignored her, and like before, only lightly-armed footmen—Level One Sentinels—monitored for irregular activity. No doubt the MoD believed the Level Seven Sentinels outside prevented someone from hacking the craft.

Avatars moved in slow motion, one representing the human controlling the steering, and the others operating the weapons. They all appeared as gears to her SI. She inserted code into the steering systems that would make the gunship move opposite the direction the pilot intended. Then, she ripped out the weapons’ targeting code. Finally, using some of her new combat code, she obliterated the autopilot AI, which had no defenses.

She caught sight of video from the MoD assassins as they pursued Ryusuke. To linger too long would make the Peacekeeper beside her real body wonder, so she only took note of their location. He was leading them east toward Pontocho Park.

A static-marred still shot from another feed showed the three Tivari from the night before, one pointing a device at the camera. Were they sabotaging the drone monitoring them? A glance at the timestamp revealed it was not current, but from an hour ago. The MoD was reviewing the footage.

As much as she wanted to steal more of the gunship’s archives, the last time had led to disaster. She returned to the exit to the datalink. She jacked back out, with only a split second of real time elapsed. As always, her limbs felt sluggish as her body acclimated to the slower speed.

“Are you all right?” Officer Perez asked.

She straightened, holding her head. “I think so. It just hurts a little. I—”

A crash rang out from behind them, and Aya joined the Peacekeeper in looking out the window.

The gunship’s wing had crashed into the side of a building, and it now careened out of control.

“That was lucky,” Officer Perez said. “I wonder why the autopilot didn’t engage.”

Maybe because she’d decompiled it.

Though the entire trip took only a minute, more Peacekeepers had joined in to escort the hovercraft. It alighted on an upper-level landing pad. When she climbed out, the vantage point provided a stunning view: thousands of skyscrapers, dotted with lights in the night, spread out all the way to the mountains that encircled the city.

“This way, please,” the Peacekeeper said, interrupting her reverie. He took her arm and guided her across the landing pad to an entrance.

Had Keiko gotten the fake message from home? If they ran into each other…

Behind them, more Peacekeeper medics were guiding the biobeds with Ken and Siena. When the sliding doors opened and Aya went through, Officer Perez guided her left into the sterile halls. Ken and Siena, however, were taken to the right.

She froze. “I want to stay with my boyfriend.”

“He is in serious need of medical attention.”

She started to turn around. “I want to be there with him.”

“You’ll just get in the way. Please come this way.” His grip held her in place.

Go with him, Siena’s voice spoke in her head.