Song of Scarabaeus by Sara Creasy Page B

checked.”
    He spared her a thoughtful glance, apparently decided to believe her, and stopped his search to face her squarely.
    â€œThe leash,” he rasped. “Can you—”
    A coughing fit interrupted his question. He leaned against the bulkhead and choked up more blood.
    â€œHey.” Edie tried to sound annoyed, but it was hardly his fault. She went to the washbasin in the corner and filled a beaker. He slid down the wall to sit on his haunches and drank the water. Crouching beside him, she took back the beaker and placed it aside, waiting.
    â€œCan you cut the leash?” he said at last, his voice grating.
    â€œI’ll try.”
    He jerked his head up, as if surprised by that.
    â€œOf course I’ll try.” She lifted her hand and almost changed her mind when he shied away. He recovered quickly, although he still looked wary. “Keep still. I’ll use a softlink this time.”
    She touched the fresh scar at his temple, felt the steady pulse under his skin, and then the sizzle of data flowing through the link. Her eyes closed and she sensed him breathing, slow and deep beside her.
    As soon as she jacked in, she knew something was different: instead of the cold, flat flow of dry-teck in the datastream, she heard the unmistakable chime of biocyph. Considering the simple task his chip performed—monitoring her splinter to check she was in range and alive—it seemed like overkill. Then again, they must have known she’d try this. She’d deactivated his boundary chip before, and they’d made sure she couldn’t do it again.
    There’s always a way in. That’s what Bethany had taught her. Climb over, dig under, smash straight through…But she could see it was hopeless. A strand of biocyph burrowed into his cerebral cortex like a tiny, immature version of her wet-teck interface. It anchored and controlled the explosive device that would detonate if she went out of range, and it was wired to painfully paralyze him if she triggered the jolt.
    The graft was artless, not the work of a cypherteck. But now that it was integrated into his brain and locked with unbreakable biocyph coding, it was immune to reprogramming and impossible to remove. It was already part of him. Attached to it was her ident code—in fact, her wet-teck sought out the ident like a voice calling her name across a crowded room. But nothing else was familiar. She circled around the thread, prodding at the edges, creating dissonant notes in the datastream. Was there anything here she could piece together to create a meaningful melody?
    A single, pure chord disengaged itself from the rest. Edie grabbed it and traced its source, certain she was doing the wrong thing, but it was all she had. Her interface kept the chord separated, but the cacophony surrounding it obliterated its path. A hard vacuum of silence cut through the link for an instant, and then a warning glyph screamed.
    Finn knew there was a problem at the same moment she did.
    â€œBack off,” he hissed.
    With a gasp, she dumped the chord and let his splinter kick her out. She pulled her hand away, opened her eyes to stare into his, into the dark gold flecks radiating across the irises. For a long moment she couldn’t speak. She had to make herself breathe again. Staggering to her feet, she felt like she should apologize but didn’t know how he’d take it.
    Instead, she stuck to the technicalities. “They’ve injected biocyph into your cerebral cortex.”
    His eyes widened. “Biocyph? In my head?”
    â€œJust a single strand. But it can’t be removed or interfered with, or the little bomb in your skull will go off. I don’t know what to do.”
    â€œHow does it work?”
    â€œIt tracks my splinter—my wet-teck interface. Specifically, it monitors my brain waves via the splinter so it knows I’m still alive and within range. And it’s a hatchet job. A real disaster