Upgrade (Augmented Duology Book 2) by Heather Hayden (best reads .TXT) 📗

More tears fell. I brushed them out of my eyes, my voice raw with pain as I answered Halle’s question. “He didn’t make it. Chris’s trying to access his memories right now, like he’s a machine that needs to have more tests run on it.”

Halle flicked its ears, oddly calm. “At Dan’s request, I reprogrammed him, gave him protection from being accessed by anyone, including Talbot. Or myself, for that matter. If his brain was not permanently damaged, he might still be in there, just trapped.”

He could be alive? I bit my lip, fighting back a surge of hope with the recent memories of his damaged body. If Halle was wrong, hope would only make the pain of loss worse. “Can you help him?”

Halle shook its head. “I did not want anyone to be able to access him. Dan will have to allow the access, but if he has no functioning sensors, he might not realize someone is trying to help.”

“There has to be something—”

“Viki!” Chris burst into the living room. “You need to come with me, right now.” He frowned at his viewscreen, then shook his head and ran back the way he’d come.

I glanced at Halle, who gave me an encouraging nod. “Talk to you later,” it said before vanishing.

Steeling myself, I rushed to the scientist’s workroom. The shock of seeing Dan’s broken body shook me again as I walked in, bringing another wave of tears I couldn’t hold back. Please be alive. Please. I forced myself to turn toward Chris, standing at the interface he had been working at before.

“Look at this.” Chris pointed at the machine, which was connected to Dan by a wire. At first the display showed code I couldn’t understand, but then a line popped out of the rest of the text.

Viki, are you there?

I gasped. “Dan?” I glanced at his body, lying prone on the table. “Can you hear me?”

There was a pause, the longest pause of my life, then one word flashed on the screen.

Yes.

I stood there for a moment in stunned silence, my emotions seesawing between delight and disbelief.

Chris touched my shoulder gently. “Please convince him to give me full access to his systems.”

My muscles tensed, and I turned, keeping myself between him and the interface. “If you hurt him…”

Chris’s eyes widened. “I wasn’t planning to. We may owe this AI our lives. I’m not going to callously erase him.”

Heat rose in my cheeks. Of course he wasn’t. If that was his plan, he would have let the agents take Dan off to the lab. “I’m sorry.”

“I would like to transfer him to something else, though. That body can’t maintain itself much longer without power.”

“I will take care of that,” Halle said over the interface’s speakers. A cat appeared on the screen, made of code warped into a feline shape. “Dan, come with me.”

Code flashed across the screen until it was a blur of light and dark, then the interface went dead. Chris cursed and moved toward the machine, but I turned and ran for the living room.

The viewscreen had two avatars on it now—one cat, and one male teenager dressed just the way he’d been the first day I had met him.

“Hello, Viki.” Dan smiled.

“How… You…” I was at a loss for words.

“I was dying, I think. I remember hearing Agent Smith’s voice, and others I didn’t recognize, and then everything went dark. But then I heard voices again, and one of them was yours, so I tried to reach out.”

“He managed to connect to the computer, and after that, it was easy enough to transfer him to the Cloud,” Halle finished.

“It’s weird.” Dan scratched his neck. “I…I’m not really sure how to describe it.”

My cheeks hurt, but I couldn’t stop smiling. “I’m so glad you’re alive.”

Dan looked down at himself. “Alive, yes. A bit incorporeal, though. Does that make me some sort of reverse ghost?”

I laughed so hard I had to sit down, my legs weakened by relief and joy.

Dad came into the living room. “Agent Smith is explaining to Dr. Sandy about Halle. He’s astonished that an AI could have lived so long undetected and would like to discuss some things with you.”

“Maybe,” Halle said noncommittally. “I would want something in return.”

Chris walked in as if on cue. “With your assistance, I could make great advancements in the field of AI. It would be an incredible opportunity.”

Halle’s ears pricked. “My price for that would be freedom and rights for all sentient AIs. There is a lot we could do for you, but not as slaves. You humans banned slavery centuries ago.”

Chris shook his head. “I can’t promise something of that scale. I don’t have the authority—”

Halle went from white to dark gray in a flash, and its ears flattened as it crouched in a hunting position. “I could turn on every viewscreen in every house on every continent and tell the world what happened today. How a single AI, after being tortured for years, tried to fight back against its oppressors. How do you think the general public would react to that knowledge? To the knowledge that the only reason that AI did not succeed was another AI, an AI that was once hunted down itself? I imagine not everyone would be as callous regarding sentient life as your Government has been.” Halle sat up, and its color lightened a fraction as its tail curled around its paws. “Alternatively, everyone could continue to live as they do now, no wiser than they were, while AIs are given the freedom to live as they choose. My kind has a lot to offer, but it should be our choice, not one made for us.”

My eyes widened. I knew how much Halle wanted freedom for its