The Chimera Vector (The Fifth Column #1)

Chapter 31: M&M's

When Sophia and her team arrived at the underground platform, Damien was waiting with the railcar, in near darkness. She wasn’t surprised to see him wearing something a little more basic than Jay. Just a black cotton jacket. Fashion wasn’t his strong point. And neither was ballistic defense.

‘Why aren’t you wearing your vest?’ she said.

Damien nodded to the railcar. ‘All my gear’s in there.’

‘As soon as we’re moving, put it on,’ she said. ‘No one saw you upload the virus?’

‘For the last ninety minutes, no one has touched the server or the virus. It’s in there alright. The security cameras are delayed.’ Damien shifted restlessly from one foot to another. ‘So is this all of you?’

Sophia shook her head. ‘Jay’s bringing one more.’

She checked the three-dimensional map on her com. Two dots were moving towards her, tagged as Jay and Benito.

Without saying a word, she gestured for Damien to board the railcar. The hydrogen-powered engine hummed to life, Nasira at its helm. Benito and Jay appeared a moment later.

Jay slapped Damien on the back, then flashed Sophia one of his insufferably luminous smiles. ‘Our chariot awaits?’

Sophia held out a Gerber Mark II fighting knife, her fingers wrapped over its foil grip. ‘RFID?’

Damien pulled a napkin from his pocket; it was folded four times over. He unraveled it to reveal his pill-shaped RFID. Satisfied, she turned to Jay. He pulled out his M&M's Minis plastic tube and opened the lid, tipped its contents into his gloved hand. Six tiny M&M's and an RFID, all stained with his blood.

He tipped the RFID back into the plastic tube and tossed the blood-coated M&M's into his mouth. Sophia grimaced, but couldn’t be bothered telling him how disgusting he was.

‘Dump your RFIDs onto the tracks,’ she said. ‘Now.’

Jay pocketed the plastic tube. ‘We’re not doing a thing you say until you uphold your end of the bargain.’

She ground her teeth together, then said, ‘Operative Zero Five Niner, Operative Zero Three Four. Children three that nestle near, eager eye and willing ear, pleased a simple tale to hear.’

Jay’s irritating gaze faded, replaced by another, strangely indifferent.

In unison, Jay and Damien said, ‘Access permitted.’

She liked this Jay better; shame she couldn’t keep him like that.

‘She resides high, with her we fly. Yet she remained there, too frosted to care.’

‘Command erased,’ Jay and Damien said, almost in unison.

‘Shut down neopsyche; soft reset.’

Their expressions shifted again. Damien looked confused. Jay simply looked annoyed.

‘Done,’ Sophia said.

‘Done?’ Jay said. ‘You haven’t done a fucking thing!’

‘There’s some framework I need to remove later, but it’s mostly redundant. The programming’s toast. If you want proof, try to cut yourself. Your neopsyche will offer no resistance. Unless, of course, you break your programming again.’

Jay looked at her as though she’d just become a giant M&M. ‘What?’

‘Your programming stops any attempt at self-harm unless dictated by the Auto-Thanatos parapsyche,’ she said. ‘Why do you think I asked you to cut each other’s out instead of your own?’