Level Six by William Ledbetter

Author:William Ledbetter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Interstellar Flight Press

CHAPTER 22

Abby’s hands shook and she still felt sick as she entered her apartment. She quickly shed the partially eaten-away clothes and put on old jeans and a t-shirt she had brought from home. They were comfortable and were not recently assembled by sandbox nano-bots.

“Mortimer?”

“Yes.”

“I would like to see the video of my mother’s death.”

There was an uncharacteristically long pause before Mortimer replied. “Are you sure you want to do this alone? Julio is out with Nora but can be back here in twenty minutes.”

“No,” she said and sat on the edge of the bed facing the wall screen. “Just play the video.”

The video shows the interior of a flying travel pod as a frazzle-haired Leigh Gibson buckles her harness and dabs at her bleeding nose with a sleeve.

“You’re free from DSD for the moment,” a male voice says. “Would you please explain why you’re doing this?”

“That was my voice replying to your mother,” Mortimer said, pausing the video. “I sometimes use different voices for different people. For example, I only use the Bishop persona with you and Julio. Your mother had just asked for my help escaping from a government facility where she had been part of a research effort. So I helped her. At this point in the video, her old boss Bryce Dobson is trying to catch her.”

“I have to get to my daughter,” Leigh says now from the past, giving Abby sudden gooseflesh.

“Then I’m sure this whole getaway was wasted,” Mortimer said. “They’ll snap you up immediately if you go near your daughter or your husband. Do you think they aren’t being watched?”

“Of course they’re being watched,” Leigh screams and slaps the padded wall beside her. “That’s what this is all about!”

There were a few videos on Leigh Gibson’s social media sites, but Abby had watched them so many times that they had lost their potency. This was new, and the feeling of recognition and of being there with her mother shook her to the core.

Then her mother starts crying, in deep racking gasps.

Abby watched as her mother pulled out several yellow ampules and eventually used one to inject something into her arm.

“I don’t understand what’s happening,” Abby whispered, afraid to look away from the screen. “Why was she so upset at being watched? And what is she injecting?”

Mortimer paused the video again. “It’s complicated, but essentially your mother developed some nano-scale spy robots called NaTTs and her boss was using them to watch her. That meant the bots were hiding on her skin and in her hair, as well as on you and your father. This breach of trust was bad enough, but when a terrorist organization released the Blue Blood virus that only killed people with nano-tech in their bodies, it became almost a death sentence.”

“Oh,” Abby said and swallowed hard. She had to get booster vaccinations for the Blue Blood virus every five years.

Mortimer started the video again.

“Get me to my daughter’s daycare, Mortimer,” Leigh says. “I don’t care about anything but Abby right now.

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