Apex Cypher (Prequel to The Techxorcist series) by Colin F. Barnes Page A

earlier. It was one of the few things that grew on those dead lands since the nuclear cataclysm. It wasn’t tasty, but it filtered the dangerous isotopes and provided the chewer with glucose; albeit not much, but beggars couldn’t be ungrateful swines.
    “I miss the mountains,” Petal said, absently brushing the dust from her leather biker’s jacket. She won in a bare-knuckle fight back on the coast. Poor bastard who challenged her didn’t know what had hit him.
    She played up being a tiny, innocent-looking punk girl to hustle the meatheads on the circuit. Although before the last fight, Gabe noticed a few of the organisers had recognised her. It seemed rumours and descriptions of her had got round. Meant that gig would soon be over.
    Given he was a big, dreadlocked, preacher, and she a pink-haired, goggled punk, it was kind of easy to know who they were. But that had other advantages too: it was easy to create a myth, exaggerate what they were capable of. Their reputation had kept them alive on more than one occasion, and often won them work ahead of someone with a lesser rep.
    “I mean it,” Petal added with a deep sigh. “It was cool and calm there. I kinda miss it.”
    “You only miss beating up the meatheads for a few bins.”
    Bins were the only currency in the abandoned lands. Standing for Binary Assets, bins were traded electronically via DigiCards—a universal system of data transfer. It was an old tech, but the few computers that had survived the cataclysm had the right ports. The bins themselves allowed people to securely transfer finite pass-codes, which gave the user potential access to information—if one could find a node with its light-drives intact.
    “Well, there’s that too,” Petal said. “But I miss the ambience.”
    “Yeah. Well, I miss the quiet.” Gabe smirked.
    “Ain’t you the comedian all the sudden?” Petal took her HackSlate from inside her jacket and gestured a two-finger swipe across its surface. “We must be close,” she said.
    “How d’ya figure?”
    “Signals, Gabe. Data flow. The first since we left Xian’s place yesterday.”
    “Huh.” Gabe’s concentration remained on the horizon. A tiny stick-like shadow extended up from the horizon in the far distance. “Looks like ya right. See over there?”
    “What is it?”
    “It’s the beacon, girl,” Gabe said. “Means we’re not far from the city of Baicheng.”
    Petal pushed her pair of opaque, brass-rimmed goggles up to her forehead. Her eyes were glossy, black orbs. They shimmered as if made from oil. She squinted at the shadow.
    Gabe would have to get her to an appropriate node soon and download the bad, malicious code she carried inside of her. When her eyes were like that, it meant she’d reached full capacity, and that wasn’t a good thing at all.
    Petal had the ability to contain artificial intelligences and dangerous viral code, while Gabe found and hacked the code in order to extract it from various computers and systems. Together they made a fine team. Their partnership came about by luck, but Gabe wasn’t one to throw away an opportunity.
    Besides, when he found her, she was banging on death’s door. He felt responsible for her now. Although truth be told, she’d saved his ass more times that he’d like to admit. Despite her small stature, she had seriously impressive capabilities. But when her internal systems, those that had remained a mystery to Gabe, were full, they had to find a computer capable of accepting the terabytes of malicious and dangerous code she carried.
    There was only one machine Gabe knew of in this part of the world: a small hamlet in the abandoned lands of Mongolia. A gang there had a server. An ancient one designed apparently for the very purpose of securing dangerous AIs.
    It was either that, or returning to Hong Kong—which wasn’t an option.
    “See?” Gabe said. “The city can’t be far off.”
    “City? You mean ruins, right?”
    “Yeah, but what ain’t a ruin