Rupture Read Online Free Page A

were full of themselves. In fact, he was convinced they weren’t that super and that all the fuss his grandparents had made when the techno-social Rupture happened last century, must have been over something besides the emergence of these assholes and their rebellious counterparts, the Rogue AIs. That big let down in the arena happened when school ended in May. Since then he’d spent the entire summer constructing a capture program.
    When the black box showed its face, he said the fast phrase that triggered the capture program. He had one stored in Sterling’s system, and it flashed into existence and went to work. When his capture program saw the small object it adapted and generated a suitable response. A net with high-density insertion barbs latched onto the box. The net pulsed as it copied the data, shrinking tighter. At first the box seemed to compress.
    Got you, shit-bird.
    He also triggered his own personal kick-ass, indestructible shield he thought would protect him from any backwash or direct sally into his harness.
    He felt his shield surge with confidence.
    Then the unthinkable: Like a man who taunts lions at the zoo, leaning too far over the railing, falls in, Joss realized his mistake too late.
    A shaft launched from the box and punched through his shield as if it were made of butter. He felt it puncture his digital chest.
    The pain thresholds on his system blinked at his workstation in red alert. This should have shut off his Virtual Reality visor. Instead, the attack aimed at his system-level security dove through his harness, along his optical nerve, and into his neocortex. An army of Rogue nanobots surged into him, and lay siege. He went numb as the Rogue AI tricked his pain receptors’ feed. He would have sat there like that until someone found him mind-dead, his genoscript completely stolen, a corpse with a smile, except that Chip had stopped by.
    “Thanks, again,” he said to Chip. The big brute with the brains of a chimp continued to look at him like he might keel over. Okay, maybe a smart chimp. Definitely a helpful chimp. “What they having today?”
    “Soy burgers, steamed brown rice, lima beans, papaya, regular stuff that’d make a donkey puke.”
    Joss looked at the tray with the clean food Sterling prided itself on providing its students—day in, day out, without fail. He searched frantically for his trash bin and just made it. He vomited for a full minute. After he recovered he looked up to see Chip with his cell phone taking a snap shot.
    “No, you didn’t,” Joss said.
    “For the yearbook.”
    “God.”
    But Joss could only pretend to joke. He still felt the harsh reality of a near brain-death experience, and his mind was still adjusting to the fact.
    “Are you all right?” Chip asked. “You look like hell.”
    Joss stared forward, still seeing that shaft sticking out of his digital self, his thoughts and memories flooding out. And, worse, as if something had flowed in. He’d felt the intruder. “It knows who I am.”
    “Who?”
    Joss realized what he’d said and snapped his mouth shut. “Nothing ... I, um, ... I messed up.”
    “I think I’m going to call Nurse Betty,” Chip said.
    “No, I don’t want that crazy old bat sticking me with anything.” Then he remembered the meaning behind all the red flashing alerts that were going off on his monitors. The school’s systems were still under attack. “Oh, hell!”
    By then he heard a system admin running down the hall.
    Joss went to work, this time with a standard keyboard and voice commands. But it only took him about seven strokes before he realized he’d been locked out. Worse, his hands started shaking.
    “You need to see the nurse,” Chip said.
    Joss pushed back from his desk, about to tell Chip to go see her himself, stood, then fell to the floor. He curled up into a ball, and began screaming in pain. He blacked out as a burning fire lanced through his body.
    And he knew, just knew, he’d been infected.
    * *