Guardian Read Online Free

enforcers of the old system; biohacked from childhood, they had more data installed in their blood than the DNA they’d been born with. They were engineered to look the same and act the same and live entirely by the instructions of their programming. They were people without fear, morality, or weakness, hardly human at all.
    When Knox had blown out the network and deleted everyone’s biofeeds, the Guardians had lost the connection to the software updates in their blood, the instructions from their controllers, the patches that kept them free of blemish. SecuriTech, the corporation that owned them, was wiped away. Now they had no direction, no purpose, and no control. They’d gone dumb the moment the networks fell. They were still strong, but incapable of taking care of themselves. Some were rounded up, put to work like pack animals, hauling and churning and heaving. Others just wandered, feral.
    No one called them Guardians anymore. They were officially dubbed “nonoperative entities.”
    Most people called them “nopes.”
    That’s all they were anyway.
    Nothings.
    But these nopes weren’t just deaf and dumb; they looked like the stuff of nightmares. The black veins bulged; their cheeks were streaked with bloody tears. They tore at their own skin until it was raw and open.
    A few of them tried to come from a side street that was still clogged with vines and they’d gotten tangled in the thick brambles. They squirmed and struggled, bleeding where the long green thorns tore into them. One had scratched and torn out most of her hair. All the veins on her scalp were visible, a network of black wires, pulsing and throbbing. Her face was caught in a thornbush, and in spite of that, she continued to try to push forward, rather than plucking the thorns out. Her cheek tore and black blood ran down. She didn’t react. She didn’t even have language to ask for help.
    A Purifier rushed over to her, swung his club down, split her head open.
    Syd saw a tall man in a green Purifier’s uniform directing the Purifiers to attack the helpless creatures. At first, his white hood looked like it was made of something reflective, the way it caught the sunlight, but then Syd realized he wore no white hood. He was simply bald, his head smooth and shiny. He had deep-set eyes and long limbs. He didn’t appear to be carrying a weapon, but he moved gracefully through the crowd and shoved any mutated Guardian that got near him to the ground, where others came and whaled upon it. He didn’t even turn to look at the carnage. His calm was disconcerting amid the frothing crowd. People scrambled over one another and screamed to get away from the nightmare figures.
    “It touched me!” someone shouted.
    “Kill it!” someone else screamed.
    “Calm down!” Counselor Baram tried to yell over the chaos, but no one could hear him. “They will be quarantined! Just stay calm!”
    A group of three Purifiers had cornered a Guardian, a male from what Syd could see, and were shoving him between themselves, bouncing him off their clubs. When he fell toward one of them, they’d strike him back, and the next Purifier would wind up to hit him, tossing him around, like a game of wounds. When he finally fell, they beat him until it was impossible to tell if he had ever been anything resembling a human.
    The Purifiers whooped and rushed to the next one. Years of terror and humiliation at the hands of the Guardians came out with every strike of a club or swing of a heavy blade at the pained creatures’ heads.
    Another of the nopes stumbled toward the stage, and a small Purifier, surely no older than twelve, twirled around and around with his machete outstretched to get as much force as possible before sailing it through the neck of his target. The fragile body fell straight down. The head spun off and whirled like a top onto the stage at Syd’s feet.
    Liam kicked it away. “We have to get you out of here.”
    “But they won’t hurt anyone . . .