Free Inescapable by Niall Teasdale

‘Well, you can do it
again.’
    ‘It was
good?’
    ‘When a woman
does that whole porn movie thrashing about and moaning thing, it
means it was good.’
    Kit beamed, a
distinctly child-like expression for an entity which had just
engaged in virtual sex. ‘I will make a note of that information for
future reference.’
    ‘You do that,’
Fox said, slipping out of bed. Distinctly sticky and riding an
endorphin high, she needed a shower before she even tried to
sleep.
    27 th March.
    The concrete walls were
coated in soot and scarred from bullet impacts. The air, hazed with
smoke, burned her lungs as she pushed onwards. ‘Another twenty
metres. We make it another twenty metres and we’re clear.’
    There was no
reply from behind her and she turned, seeing nothing more than the
smoky air and the bulky figure with the tri-barrel rotary weapon
pod who was coming through it with a manic look on his face. His
heavy, out-of-proportion cybernetic arms were the only reason he
could use the huge gun and he had been chasing them for hours, it
seemed. The barrels spun up as he activated the firing circuit.
    ‘No!’ She
turned and braced to run and…
    And Kit was
standing there in the corridor ahead of her. ‘You’re dreaming, Fox.
It’s a dream. Wake up.’
    ‘No!
He’ll–’
    ‘Wake up!’
    Fox’s eyes
flicked open and she lay in the dark, feeling the sweat running
down between her breasts. ‘Shit.’
    ‘Are you okay?’
Kit asked. ‘Should I order a light tranquiliser?’
    Rolling onto
her back, Fox sat up and looked at the fox-girl, shaking her head.
‘I’ll be fine. It’s probably this bloody bunker. The design is more
or less identical to the one in Dallas. It’s too much like being
back there.’
    ‘You were
dreaming of Marshall, but he did not get his cybernetics until
after the Dallas incident.’
    ‘Dreams aren’t
always logical. You could see that?’
    Kit gave a
little shrug. ‘I could see the imagery your brain was processing. I
get fragments rather than a proper image. It took me several
seconds to work out how to impose myself onto your sensorium. I
would have intervened sooner otherwise.’
    ‘You did fine.’
Pulling aside the sheets, Fox went to the small kitchenette area to
get water. ‘Would you pull up the surface schematic for this place?
I’m not going to get back to sleep for an hour or so, so I might as
well work.’
    ‘Of course,’
Kit replied, summoning up a similar virtual display to the one
Pythia had used earlier. ‘Is there anything in particular you are
looking for?’
    ‘Well, this
place is basically a copy of the Dallas bunker and I know
how that was breached, both by the UA cell and my team. I want to
check that the holes have been plugged.’
    ~~~
    ‘Basically it got
forgotten,’ Duncan said with a sigh. ‘This place was built before
the Dallas siege and when Palladium was formed, they put in a
programme to have the known vulnerabilities taken care of in every
facility with the same design. But they had to prioritise
somehow…’
    ‘And a little
climate research station in the middle of nowhere wasn’t high on
the priority list,’ Fox said, nodding. They were watching as Pythia
set her entire contingent of forensic microbots to work on one of
the air-conditioning conduits which dropped from the surface to an
engineering room thirty metres below ground. ‘Pythia, what’s the
estimate on completing that survey?’
    ‘For a complete
analysis, sixteen hours. Preliminary results in twelve.’ The AI’s
voice was calm and authoritative, confident in her ability to
handle the tasks given.
    ‘All right,
inform Kit when it’s done. The work should have been done,’ she
added to Duncan, ‘but I’m not surprised it didn’t get done.
Even Jackson Martins’ companies are allowed to make mistakes. We
need to get a priority order out to have all the other locations
with this build checked and sealed.’
    ‘I’ll get on
it,’ Duncan replied. ‘So we know how they