Free Rebound by Joseph Veramu Page A

required to facilitate certain global events. She has an exciting role ahead as the mother of a messiah.” She paused and looked at them with what was supposed to be the emotion of understanding. “I’m a reasonable person. We can give them new bodies that will take a very short period to clone and you are out of here as free people. Their current body containers are worth billions. We want it back. In exchange, we provide them with newly cloned bodies of a standard version and you can all go out to live normal lives with the masses.”
    Ryan was going to make a comment that Karabos was sick but realized that this was not the appropriate time to antagonize her. Besides, machines were never mentally sick!
    “Let’s buy time,” Roland whispered. ‘Tell her we need time to think over her proposal.”
    Karabos thought about it for a fleeting moment. There was a subtle smirk imprinted on her face. “I’ll give you 25 minutes. You’re all highly intelligent to make a rational decision within that time frame. If we don’t hear from you, we’ll come in. We have you surrounded.”

Chapter 25: The codes
    “Since you are chained I’ll make my way to the mainframe so I can key in the codes,” Emily whispered.
    “That’s okay,” Max whispered. “You can access it from mine. All the machines are integrated. But it’s going to be touch and go because all the frames are magnetized for intruders. We’d probably have 5 minutes at the most before the alarm sounds and the area is swarming with armed robots.”
    As Emily punched in the codes she noticed something strange. It was as if Sofia had downloaded part of her brain to enable her to speed up the process. She calculated that Sofia had a billion petaflops of computing power. She was loaning about a million.
    Then it all began to fall in place like a jigsaw puzzle. She was taken away and put in storage because they knew Sofia was helping her. She and Mason were part of the mission to bring down Babylon Corp. Even this current moment when she was punching in the codes was all part of the plan.
    The monitor began to light up like strobe lights as she penetrated deep into its core.
    It seemed like she was passing through a very violent storm as various virus and intruder killers in the system tried to block and destroy.
    The seconds ticked away slowly. She felt sick with impatience.
    The various locked virtual passages and doors were opened, albeit reluctantly!
    Then abruptly as if they had just passed through the eye of a ferocious hurricane, there was calm.
    They had reached the inner recesses where the control functions of Babylon Corp existed. It controlled all actions within the huge complex.
    Emily felt a strange calm and a feeling of overwhelming power. Being mentored by Sofia had taught her that immense power had to be used for the common good.
    “Remove our chains first,” Max reminded her. “And insert helmets for those with exposed heads.”
    A swarm of armed guards were rushing into the area.
    She punched in another set of codes and they were instantly immobilized like obsolete machines in a junk yard.
    She noticed that there was an excited hum as the intelligent machines and non military grade robots whose chains had been removed, disabled their programs and then walked away from the lab.
    “Open all entrances and set timer explosions in the strategic areas near the clone lab, robotics and the hovercraft area.”
    “Okay,” was all she could say to these requests.
    “I’m bringing over a hovercraft. Make a clear path.”
    Emily punched in the commands.
    “It’s not in Sofia’s instructions but I’d like to come with you.”
    “Mason will decide but it sounds fine to me.”
    Max made a satisfied grunting noise as he ran. What was good for Emily was good for Mason.

Chapter 26: Not enough time left
    “She’s devious,” Roland said. “25 minutes is a lifetime for her to overpower us without keeping her promises.”
    “What do you suggest?”