Saturation Point by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Author:Adrian Tchaikovsky [Tchaikovsky, Adrian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Hard Science Fiction, Thrillers, Technological, Genetic Engineering, Military, Science Fiction
ISBN: 9781837861743
Google: ecf9EAAAQBAJ
Amazon: 1837861749
Publisher: Solaris
Published: 2024-03-30T07:00:00+00:00

6.

Session 36

We’re underground now. Cooler, a little. I followed the beacon. Doctor Fell’s beacon. She is here. Glasshower was right. Until they killed him.

Cheller’s still alive. Just alive. I keep giving them water. Their suit’s gashed open. Their leg’s all over blood. But we’re far enough down. Far enough that it’s cooler. Humidity still off the scale, but it was a positively chilly eighty-three degrees when I checked. Oh, and battery at thirty-seven per cent. I shut it down. I took off the helmet. I suffer with Cheller, because I need to save power for when I have to go out there again.

It’s just us two once more. I can’t believe… We had Oskar and Mayweather, Jun and Crisis and Amy. It was the whole gang back together. Now it’s just us.

I have to say. What happened. Or nobody’ll ever know.

We were at the river. Oskar had the VTOL coming, but he kept losing the network. He had a node of it, a physical thing, the size of your fist. I could see it spark in the saturated air when it was transmitting. But most of the time it linked to nothing. Oskar was raging, saying it wasn’t possible. He’d just had a connection, clear as day. We were surrounded by nodes.

Crisis had reached us by then. He had Amy and Jun. They’d been playing with filters and things on the visors, trying to cut through the twilight murk, the constant hanging sheets of the fog. Amy was looking into the jungle—just an anonymous figure with that number 4 on her suit to say who she was. Gun in her hands, beaded with moisture. And Crisis, just a slightly bigger figure with that stupid nickname over his visor. Crisis decided Oskar’s problem was due to enemy action. Someone had discovered our network and fucked it. Arguing with Oskar over encryption security. Oskar arguing right back that it wasn’t possible. But you were wrong, Oskar. Even though you were the expert, I think you were wrong. I’m sorry.

Amy watching the trees. Oskar tinkering with the node, trying to troubleshoot and not understanding just how much trouble there was to shoot. Me, Cheller, Mayweather, Jun, sitting on the bank and waiting to be rescued like princesses. Jun had been with Crisis all this time. Had the sense to stick with the people who knew what they were doing. I was supposed to be that person. I was the native guide, the local expert who knew all the good bars and restaurants. I was useless. I was going to record another entry, then, but I felt too depressed, too much in shock. Peter and Glasshower were dead. Murdered, actually murdered by… by green men. The green men who couldn’t be.

That’s when I found her message. And her beacon.

I remember just playing it over and over. Looking at the others. Knowing I should tell them immediately what I had, and that every second I didn’t meant I was a traitor. But knowing they’d think I was a traitor anyway the moment they heard it and so not wanting to tell them.

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