Broken Resistance by TW Iain

Author:TW Iain [Iain, TW]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: TW Iain
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Brice

Brice paced his new prison, then sat on one of the chairs, swung his feet up onto the table. Changed to the second chair. Paced again.

It gave his body something to do while his mind worked.

Or tried to. Because there were too many questions, too many unknowns. Like how much the Ancients knew. Sure, he’d told them Macklyn Grivas ran deep Kaiahive, but did this only confirm what they’d already uncovered? And what the hell was this whole processing area? Why had some prisoners been returned to the holding area and others moved to that other area?

He focused on the brown dots there‌—‌two of them now, because Black Three had appeared in Turi Vlahakis’ cell (brown dot number 221), and they’d left together, dropping three levels. Both Duffey’s and Turi’s dots seemed paler, the brown fading. Could mean nothing‌—‌the colours were only markers, right?‌—‌but it bothered Brice.

He reached for the data tabs again, pulled everything he could, ran it through some of Piran’s routines.

“Not a clue what I’m looking for. Need a hand.” Piran? You there?

<⁠Yeah. Just finished chatting to Deva again. Finalising stuff. So what’s up?⁠>

What’s up? Only everything.

Trying to get to grips with some data here. Not my strong point.

<⁠Know that. Yeah, I can see the data. Pulls from those two beneath you, right? Tell you, these Ancients love their data.⁠>

Brice didn’t want to know how Piran knew what he was looking at. Get the impression the data’s changing, he sent.

<⁠Makes sense. Real-time records, yeah?⁠>

Get that. But this is‌…‌something else. Tried running some of your routines, but I’m not sure what I’m doing. Wanted to compare current to older data.

<⁠Right, right. Need to tap into the log for that. Never scrub data, these guys, but they shift stuff, have archives all over. Let’s see‌…‌yeah, found the log idents. Searching. Got the archives. Going to assume the first string’s time and date‌—‌some kind of temporal marker, anyway. Yeah. Interesting. Right, that makes sense.⁠>

Brice shook his head. Talking to yourself, he sent. Don’t have a clue what you’re doing, right?

<⁠Oh, yeah. Impressive storage‌—‌archives change as relatives rather than simple copies. I need algos to work back and extract.⁠>

Surprisingly, Brice kind of understood that. You’ve got the right algos or whatever?

<⁠Tracking them. These Ancients are super-organised. Like some kind of hyper-bureaucracy, all references to references. Reckon they’d make great lawyers‌—‌keep arguments going for days on technicalities, that kind of thing. But I’ve got those algos, extracting data. Yeah, major changes. Hard to tell what it means, though.⁠>

What what means?

<⁠The changes. Not sure what all the data refers to. Matched some, by comparing Ancients’ records with ours‌—‌well, stuff I’ve pulled through various systems.⁠> Piran paused. <⁠You know the company reckon you’ve got a ten percent chance of having a heart attack through over-exertion before you’re forty?⁠>

Brice winced. Prefer it if you didn’t pry.

<⁠Just saying. Found my own records, and they gave me a sixteen percent chance of becoming mentally unstable in the next five years, so what do they know?⁠>

Brice laughed. Happened months ago.

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