Burn Code

Twelve

I drew the tie on my robe tighter and stared at the bathtub full of ice and water. My hands had gone numb preparing it — I wasn’t looking forward to climbing in and laying in it.

“Cara?” Paul spoke softly. He stood at my hip.

“What?”

“If this doesn’t work out—”

“Don’t,” I said, shaking my head. “Just don’t.”

“No, you don’t get to brush me off.” He narrowed a stare at me but his lips turned in a grin. “Not this time.”

I didn’t want a deathbed confession, even if it wasn't mine given. Glancing away, I stared at the tub — it was emotionally safer.

“Had things been different, I’d like to think you and I might have had a chance.” As his arm lifted to circle my shoulder, he pressed a kiss to my head.

I snorted a laugh.

“I’m serious,” he said lightly into my hair.

“I know you are — but we would have killed each other. One way or another.”

“A fun way to go though.”

He drew me closer. It was an odd scene with the both of us standing there with him in nothing more than his shorts and me naked under the satin robe cinched tight at the waist.

Turning in his arms, I lifted on my toes and kissed him. Kissed Paul to remember. I etched into memory the feel of his lips between mine and the solid warmth of his body pressed flush. I cradled his head in my hands and brushed my palm against the stubble along his jaw.

Licking my lips, I swirled the taste around my mouth. I locked away the image of his warm eyes and soft smile that dimpled his cheeks. His arms wrapped around me and held on as I kissed him again.

Stripping out of the robe, I handed it to him before wading into the glacial cold. The shivers started immediately, and I had to fight against very normal reactions to vacate the tub.

He laughed at my reaction. “A little chilly?”

“No, it’s quite balmy!” I said around the chattering teeth as I began to squat down. “But its either this or I melt.”

Activating that much code across my nanites was going to put out an excessive amount of heat. The ice bath was the only way I’d preserve any skin around each of the nanoshunts in the tattoos. If I managed to survive. Grendel might fry me as soon as I went live.

“Drop the jack, Paul.”

Paul gripped my hand one last time, helping me ease the rest of the way into the ice. Everything started to go numb and I drew a deep breath of air past my quivering lips before I gave him a nod.

He returned the gesture and forced a smile on his face. “Here goes nothing.”

The jack lifted and at once the nanites activated their last known command. The ice numbed some of it, but the wash of fire from Grendel’s overload script flared through every inch of my skin. It blazed to life through the nanoshunts, burning hottest at my tattoos where their concentrations were the highest. Forcing myself to concentrate, I booted the fiber net and willed it to work.

I heard Paul call my name and he scrambled, bracing himself against the tub wall to lean over me. The seizures began then and my body spasmed in the ice as the malicious code drove the nanites to burn their way through the sensory node in the Ouroboros at the base of my neck.

“Cara!”

I saw him behind the wash of my optics. A little red ping flashed in the lower right as the rest sheered and scrambled. The bots were even trying fry my lenses.

Forty five seconds. I had to survive through forty five seconds.

Gnawing pain replaced the burning. I imagined it as those billion flagellum spinning at increasing speeds to shred every bit of tissue they passed.

The pinging light started to scramble too as it switched to amber. Nanites that had taken the bait were ingesting the worm virus to recode. The reprogrammed ones were fighting back, spreading it twice as fast as they themselves were targeted.

Losing all balance control, I slipped beneath the ice and water. My heart hammered and clenched in my chest. The arrhythmia could kill me before the nanites did. I sucked in a mouthful of ice and sputtered. Paul clutched a fistful of my hair and pulled me to the surface.

Everything went dark, muffled silent.

Then like a switch, something instinctual demanded that I breathe. I did. Drawing a huge sucking breath, I scrambled in the water.

The little pinging light returned and it glowed a solid, steady green.

“Cara!”

Diagnostics scrolled across my optics.

“Cara!”

Trace routes began, sniffing through the bots, looking for any sub level coding. The tally percentages flashed as the tech finalized its reboot.

“Cara!”

I turned towards Paul. Arms wrapped around my shoulders, he held me tight. His eyes were wide, his face pale in terror.

“What?” I dumbly replied.

“Are you all right?”

The diagnostics finished and began subroutines. The new coding was brilliant. I found most of the PIPs in the neighborhood without even trying. Paul’s open channel blinked in my periphery and I randomly scoped it. I reached half of his shield’s general sub routines before I stopped myself.

“Yeah.” I smiled, wiping a streak of hair from my cheek. “I’m fine. It’s gone — all gone.”

“You’re glowing.”

I glanced down. The phoenix had spread her fiery wings across my chest and Bast’s golden collar and cartouche gleamed through the water. The boteh on my other arm reflected its colors across the bobbing ice. Accessing the new subroutines, I dampened the nanites, quenching their fluorescence.

“Out of the ice before you freeze,” he said softly against my cheek. He helped me to stand and step from the frigid water before wrapping me in a towel.

Paul buried me in blankets on the bed and briskly rubbed at my hands. He rubbed till they regained the sensation to clutch at him.

“I’m all right,” I weakly protested.

“You’re still freezing. Your damn fingertips are blue.”

“Laying in a vat of ice will do that to a girl.” I gave him a wary smile. “Just crawl in here with me and do it the old fashioned way.”

Slipping in with me, Paul drew my back to his chest and circled my waist with an arm. Heat rolled off of him and I tried to snuggle closer to it.

“You’re like hugging a damn icicle.” He muttered, tucking my head beneath his chin. My clenched jaw eased as I started to thaw.

“Shush,” I managed before falling asleep.