Code Breakers: Alpha by Colin F. Barnes

enter this code: oh-forty-seven-hash-three-hash-one-nine-fifty-eight-colon-six. That’ll connect you to our short-range, virtual private network. Our VPN. Once the NanoStem wears off and you can fully interact with your neck port, we’ll be able to communicate securely and send data to each other. Where we’re going, we’re gonna need it: it’s a dangerous place out there in… the abandoned lands.”
    “Sure. No problem. I got it.” Without thinking he did as he was told, and he felt a slight buzz of electricity in his dermal implant.
    Petal was saying something again. Her voice lilted and floated as if it were some far-off song from an audio system. He knew what she was saying was important and useful, but he just let the words flow through his brain, socket themselves into places that he’d recover later. For now, he was just pleased to be numb—to let the grief and heartache melt away like ice on a summer’s day.
    His eyelids grew too heavy to resist. Leaning back, he gave in to the drugs and conjured memories of his two girls: they grew faint and indistinct, and the last thought he had before sleeping was that he couldn’t remember exactly what they looked like.
     

Chapter 6
     
    T he clacking and whirring of the train penetrated Gerry’s subconscious. The depth of his sleep became thin, like NanoSheets: parts of the real world transforming the cadre of diaphanous thoughts that ran through his mind.
    The steady rhythm from outside melded with his frantic cogitations until, within his mind, all he saw was a stream of code. At first he couldn’t make sense of the programmes—being made up with the symbols and characters from the old C language—but then, like a student of foreign languages, who, being thrown into the deep end with fluent speakers, soon started to understand: rhythms, grammar, syntax, logic, loops, statements, call-backs, variables, constants, objects… so much data—so much possibility.
    The train screeched to a halt.
    Gerry snapped his eyes open with a start, sucked in a breath, and gripped the handrail as if he were falling off a cliff.
    Ahead of him bright light reduced his pupils to dust specks. The aurora of white light encompassed everything, so that for a minute, Gerry thought he was dead.
    No one spoke. All around him, more blinding light… but there, in front of him in the next row, a head… dreadlocks.
    “Gabriel. Is that you?” His voice felt small, shaky, like a boy’s.
    The head turned.
    Gabe’s voice was hushed, filled with tension. “Quiet, Gez, we’re approaching the toll. Let us handle this. You stay where you are, okay?”
    A hand, cool and clammy, circled his forearm. Her grip delicate, like his grandmother’s on her deathbed. The image struck Gerry like a bullet, and it was all he could do to choke down the welling up of emotion. A simple touch shouldn’t be able to bring so much pain. He thought of his grandmother in her hospice: withered and grey. Her skin gone translucent so that her slow veins showed through like blue string. He, his wife, and his father sat around her—waiting. Her touch was the last thing she gave him.
    A tear fell down Gerry’s cheek. It reached halfway before another soft, caring hand wiped it away.
    Petal slipped across the plastic seat until her warmth radiated into his leg and ribs.
    “It’s okay, Gerry. I understand. You get used to it. You’ll forget. Well, in my case the memories faded for other reasons. S’all part of the job. You’ll get through it, Gez. I promise.”
    The train came to a full stop. Its motors whined down, and the doors slid open with a whoosh of air.
    Petal gave his arm a quick squeeze before standing up. “We’ll be right back. Let us scope it out first. We ain’t in Paradise anymore. They’ll ‘love’ the likes of you. All fresh and innocent.”
    “Who will?”
    Petal gave him a quirky, side-lilting smile and flipped over her mirrored lenses on her goggles. “The natives… let’s just say