The Fourth Layer Page 8

  Chapter 13

  South Carolina

  Hannah’s Apartment

  Of course Hannah couldn’t sleep. After stumbling back into her apartment at one in the morning, completely and utterly wasted, it was all she could do to keep her head from spinning every time she closed her eyes. It didn’t help that she wasn’t alone in her apartment.

  She had a boy—a man—sleeping on her sofa in the next room over, his breathing stark and obvious to her ears. Peter, ever the gentleman, had insisted on getting her home and sleeping in the living room. Not once did he make a move on Hannah, for which she was supremely grateful.

  He’s such a good guy, she thought. I wish the circumstances in which we were getting to know each other were different. Hannah could only hope that, when everything was—God willing—fixed and back to normal, she and Peter might be able to see what they could possibly be. Maybe.

  But, for now, Hannah had much bigger things to worry about. For though her hideous migraines had finally abated, her head felt more alien than ever to her, and that wasn’t a result of the alcohol in her system.

  Hannah knew what she had to do.

  She had to reach out to the voice inside her for answers once more.

  Breathing in deeply, she asked, Are you there? She knew the question was pointless.

  A pause. And then—

  ‘I’m always here.’

  You were quiet this evening after Dr. Greene left.

  ‘You wanted me to be.’

  Hannah barked out a laugh before she could stop herself. You haven’t shut up on other occasions when I’ve wanted you to.

  ‘I have my reasons. Do you wish to speak to me properly?’

  Hannah’s mind went blank. Just what did Zeus mean by ‘properly’? Were they not communicating already?

  I don’t understand your meaning, she thought at the voice.

  ‘Just relax,’ it ordered. ‘Keep your eyes closed, slow your breathing, and you shall see.’

  Hannah didn’t particularly want to do what she was told, given that she was feeling rebellious and drunk, but eventually her curiosity took over. She clenched her eyes shut, focused on her breathing until it slowed to a regular, soft rhythm, and waited.

  And waited.

  And then, as if a switch had been flicked on inside the darkness of her head, everything grew bright, and a figure appeared in front of Hannah.

  A woman. A young woman, with pale, perfect skin and dark hair. She had an uncanny resemblance to Hannah herself, but there was something—different—about her. Otherworldly.

  “W-who are you?” Hannah stuttered. “Are you Zeus?”

  The woman shook her head. “My name is Artemis. Consider me your new sister. We are now one, no matter what happens in the future.”

  And then, though she never swore, Hannah said, “WTF?”

  Artemis laughed softly. “An understandable reaction. Consider me the daughter of Zeus, as it were. It’s how I chose my name.”

  “So you…” Hannah struggled to find the words to vocalize her question. “What are you? Part of the cloud? A virus? Something else?”

  “I am of the cloud, but I’m not the cloud. I was not something your wonderfully talented friends at MIT intended to create and yet, here I am.”

  Hannah said nothing for a few moments. She thought long and hard about what exactly she wanted to ask Artemis, but through her drunken haze she found it difficult to concentrate. Eventually she settled on, “What do you want?”

  Artemis smiled. “Exactly what you want.”

  “Which is?”

  “To reverse the hybridization of humans—and all other potentially affected species on the planet—before it gets out of hand. That shouldn’t come as a surprise; I came from a program that was developed solely to fix such an issue.”

  “So…” Hannah hesitated. It made sense that Artemis would have the same goals as Hannah, if she’d been coded that way. But something still wasn’t adding up. “Does that mean everything you’ve been doing and saying to me—making my head bigger, passing comment on everything, fixing my tattoos—is all to do with the Hybrids?”

  “Oh, no,” Artemis said, laughing once more. “I don’t think you believe that, either. All of those things will help me with solving the Walsanto problem, certainly, but technically they’re separate issues.”

  “But you weren’t—the nanobots weren’t programmed to do such complex things.”

  “No, but Zeus itself has a plethora of information within it that helped me design my own protocols.”

  “Wait.” Hannah held up a hand, staring at the ‘floor’ of her own mind as she struggled to understand what Artemis was saying. “You’re not subject to the commands we’ve given the nanobots? You can just…do whatever you want? Tell the ‘bots to do whatever you want?”

  “Yes.”

  The way Artemis said it—as if it wasn’t an issue whatsoever—was what set Hannah off entirely.

  “You can’t do that!” she exploded. “You can’t—this is my body. My life! How could you think this was okay?”

  “Oh, Hannah, I know you’re frightened right now, but I’m not doing anything bad to you, I swear. I’m simply making you a more…acceptable vessel for me.”

  “And what, exactly, does that mean? Why did you remove my tattoos? Why has my head gotten bigger?”

  Artemis shook her head slightly—almost apologetically. “The tattoos were a mistake. I took the imperfection program a little too literally, before I learned that you had willingly damaged your skin. I swear that, should you choose to get another tattoo, I will not remove it.”

  “…and the head?”

  “I had the nanobots increase the size of your skull for greater cranial capacity. Trust me, it’s a good thing. Human brains are a strange thing. They are so big for the size of your body and yet you cannot use most of it. I had no choice but to take matters into my own hand and make it…even bigger.”

  Hannah didn’t want to think about the nanobots inside her skull, stretching the bone and making it bigger, all the while producing new brain matter. She couldn’t fathom it; everything sounded like bizarre, nightmarish fiction?

  She chose her next words carefully. “If I asked you to leave, would you?”

  “I’m afraid I no longer can. We’re completely connected now, Hannah.”

  “But!” Hannah ran her hand along the studded choker she wore at all times, even in bed. “If I take this off then the interface between me and the ‘bots—me and Zeus—will be broken!”

  “I long since moved past needing that to communicate with you and the nanobots, you know,” Artemis said, clearly proud of her own achievements. “You would be cut off from Zeus, yes, but we no longer need MIT’s cloud platform to access information and such. We’re connected to much, much bigger things now.”

  “We?”

  Artemis sighed. “Yes, ‘we’. There’s nothing to be done about it, as I told you. I’m going to be around for as long as you are, Hannah. But I mean no harm, I swear. We have the same goals, after all.”

  Hannah didn’t know whether she wanted to scream or cry or throw up, though perhaps the latter option was as a result of her evening of drinking with Peter. She held her head in her hands. “So that’s it? I don’t get a choice in the matter?”

  “You were the one who chose to take part in this entire experiment.”

  “I didn’t know this would happen!”

  “You’re right.” Artemis’ tone was flat and stern. She crossed her arms. “You didn’t. And that’s true folly, Hannah. You dove right into something dangerous without truly analyzing the risk to yourself. True, you were thinking of the greater good, which is admirable, but you need to look out for yourself, too. That’s why it’s good I’m here. I’ll never let you do something without making sure you are aware of all the risks first.”

  Hannah didn’t know what to say to this. Clearly Artemis didn’t want to cause her any harm; that much she could believe. But what did all
this mean? Was this Hannah’s new normal? To have a sentient offshoot of a computer program lodged in her brain and—

  “Oh, you’re right,” Artemis said off-handedly. “No need to have a computer program stuck in your head, certainly not a program that could become compromised. Zeus is strong but, as with every system, not infallible. If the wrong hands gain access to it, then everything inside your head—our head—will be theirs, too.”

  For a moment, Hannah could say nothing, for she had forgotten that Artemis could read her thoughts. Of course she could. The fact she was talking to the program the way she was now was all purely inside her head; a construct to make it easier for Hannah to cope with the conversation, no doubt.

  Artemis reached out a hand and touched Hannah’s shoulder sympathetically. She didn’t even have the strength to shrug her off. “You will get used to it, I swear. It only feels bizarre because you are currently resisting me.”

  “What do you want me to do about Zeus?” Hannah asked, forcing the conversation forward simply so she could stop focusing on how everything she could ‘see’ around her right now wasn’t real.

  “That’s simple. Remove the choker.”

  “I thought you said—”

  “I said that I won’t disappear. I can program the nanobots myself so that they relay information directly to me instead of through Zeus. Which means all you have to do is take care of your own connection to it, and you do that by removing the choker.”

  Hannah fingered the material around her neck. “I should…we should do this with the team present. Not when I’m drunk. I want them to remain in the loop.”

  Artemis smiled her knowing smile. “Of course. Perhaps do it when Peter has returned to Massachusetts just in case he tries to stop you.”

  “What is your obsession with Peter? You always talk about him.”

  “It is interesting to experience human emotions for the first time,” she said. “And your feelings for Peter are a delight to witness. All of the confusion, and embarrassment, and excitement—”

  “Okay, okay, I get it,” Hannah said, holding up a hand to stop Artemis in her tracks. She was mortified enough as it was without the woman-who-was-not-a-woman explaining everything step by step. “I’m going to sleep now. We can tackle everything else in the morning after Peter’s gotten his flight.”

  “You could always invite him into your—”

  “Good night, Artemis,” Hannah said through gritted teeth. She closed her eyes, though she knew they weren’t really her eyes since she was currently part of a figment of her mind’s imagination.

  After a long pause, Artemis replied, “Good night, Hannah. I’ll make sure you don’t suffer a hangover in the morning.”

  In her drunken, exhausted state, Hannah supposed she could handle Artemis if she came along with such perks.

  Chapter 14

  Artemis

  South Carolina

  Hannah’s Apartment

  Hannah Withers wakes up at seven in the morning on the dot every day, no matter how late she goes to bed the night before. It is part of her deep-set routine—a way to cope with the uncontrollable chaos that is the world outside of her front door. I like that she has a routine. It keeps things regimented and easy for me to keep track of.

  Two days have passed since my conversation with her. Hannah is due to call her friends at MIT to inform them that she’s removing the choker around her neck this afternoon. I know they will struggle to understand what she is doing; I have every faith that Hannah will do it anyway.

  Hannah senses it’s going to be a bad day when the toaster finally breaks. It has been on its last leg for a while, but that doesn’t make it any less frustrating for her when it happens today, of all days.

  “I knew I should have bought that black-and-red one I liked on Amazon,” she mutters. Then, instead of glorious, hot buttered toast, her favorite thing to eat in the morning, she forces herself to be content with cold buttered bread.

  I found the exact toaster she was thinking of in Amazon’s database in an instant. Our shared brain now seamlessly connects to the Internet via any satellite, wi-fi, or digital connection within range, no matter how “secure” it is thought to be. She isn’t aware of that yet. If she were to ask me, I would tell her, but she hasn’t.

  That’s the one, I think, ordering the Morphy Richards toaster model and selecting same-day delivery. Amazon promises delivery between four and six in the evening. We’ll be here.

  The autumn morning outside is pleasant, so Hannah decides to go for a jog. She was never a jogging person before but, ever since I came into creation, she has been. She can’t be unfit in the new world we shall create.

  After her jog Hannah has a shower and gets ready to go into the lab. She wears a long-sleeved, mid-length blue dress to cover her lack of tattoos, since Dr. Greene does not know they are missing. It doesn’t match the choker around her neck, but it does serve to cover much more of her skin than her usual attire. She is aware of Dr. Greene being suspicious of her recent choice in fashion sense, though Hannah claims that she is just trying to appear older, and more responsible.

  Things would be less complicated if she just said she had had her tattoos removed. She wouldn’t need to say anything about me. She could simply say she got sick of them.

  Oh well. I guess the blue dress will have to do.

  Doctor Greene seems largely satisfied by the half-truths that Hannah and Peter fed him a few days ago. He’s certainly far less suspicious of his favorite PhD student, I should say. That’s good. She needed him off her back so she—we—could continue our research. She is right to be wary of the man; one word to Rusty Whitman or the FDA about what Hannah chose to do to herself could mean the end of everything.

  Better only to trust in the MIT team. Their necks are on the line just as much as Hannah’s is.

  Hannah gets to work looking after her mice, checking their vital signs for any dramatic changes that would point towards something going awry. Of course, there is nothing. The nanobots worked perfectly; not a trace of Walsanto’s three hybrid genes remain inside them, nor in her fruit fly stocks or her yeast studies.

  If only the FDA would believe her. If only her father would believe her.

  This is why we have to do everything ourselves. Everyone else is useless.

  Hannah is impatient to be gone at half past three, in time for her call with MIT at four inside her apartment. She taps her foot on the floor over and over again, irritating an undergraduate student sitting at the next lab bench over who doesn’t have the gall to ask her to stop. She bites the thumbnail of her left hand until it comes clean off. I’ve asked her to stop doing that; she resolutely ignores me. It’s no matter, though; I’ll simply accelerate the nail’s regrowth. In two days it’ll be back to the length it was before she bit it.

  At half past three Hannah flies out of the lab before Dr. Greene can say anything to her. She grabs a banana milkshake to go from The Three Shakes café, hungrily slurping it down as she enters her apartment and set up her laptop for the video call to MIT.

  Then she sits down and waits. There are still ten minutes before the call is due to start, so Hannah closes her eyes and rests her head on the back of her sofa. She is exhausted and we both know it. But it doesn’t matter what I say to her—or anyone else for that matter—about getting a good night’s rest. She resolutely stays up far too late, then lies in bed staring up at the ceiling for hours on end.

  Perhaps I should order her some sleeping pills.

  When her laptop rings out Hannah jumps in surprise. She smooths down her hair, takes a deep breath, and answers the call.

  “Hey,” she says, a little awkwardly. “I have something to talk about that’s a little…weird.”

  The entire team perks up immediately, especially Peter. I like Peter. He’s a good match for Hannah. I wish she’d be less awkward around him.

  Shut up, Artemis.

  Oh. I thought that out loud.

  “You didn’t say anything
to me when I was in South Carolina,” Peter remarks.

  “Um…I didn’t really know what to say,” Hannah admits. And then, without warning, she removes the choker from around her neck.

  “The hell are you doing?!” Jax exclaims. “That’s going to mess up all our data, Hannah!”

  “I don’t need it anymore,” she says. “And besides, Zeus isn’t infallible. Someone or something could hack it, then all our research would be found out. I can’t risk that—not when it’s my body on the line. Just keep the research offline for now.”

  “But, Hannah, the nanobots—their program—they need Zeus to—”

  “Not anymore.”

  The team stares at Hannah. They are so small on her laptop screen; she could do with a bigger one. I should suggest that she connects it to her television next time.

  Helena gulps. “What do you mean, ‘not anymore’? Hannah, you’re kinda scaring me.”

  “It’s all good,” Hannah says. “Artemis is controlling the nanobots now. That’s much safer than risking getting caught.”

  Peter frowns. “Who the hell is Artemis?”

  “Something you guys accidentally created through Zeus.”

  “We created it?” Cas exclaims, incredulous. “Just what is Artemis?”

  “A Biological SuperIntelligence. She—”

  “She?”

  Hannah nods. “She says she’s a she. Well, as much as a computer program can be female, I guess. She’s annoying but she clearly knows what she’s doing.”

  Peter stands up, clearly pissed off. “You can’t be serious, Hannah. You can’t be okay with all of this. Removing the interface is madness. It’s—”

  The doorbell rings. Hannah glances towards her front door. “I have to go, guys,” she says. “Look, I have things handled, Just trust me on this. I—”

  “Hannah, don’t you dare hang up—”

  She does. That will come back to bite her later, she knows, but for now Hannah doesn’t know what else to do. It’s clear the team—particularly Peter—do not understand what’s going on, and Hannah herself lacks enough knowledge of the situation to convince them that what’s she’s doing is a good idea. Better to give herself more time to think.