Add's Stuff to Look At

Chapter One

The start of the end came quickly—in a heat of the moment, back-alley, knife-slashing, blood pumping instant. Throwing his arm up in front of his face, Draven braced himself, waiting for the knife strike that connected a moment later. As he expected, pain burst bright and sharp in his forearm, and a tang of copper saturated the air. Even the crimson droplet that landed on his upper lip wasn’t entirely unexpected. Being stabbed tended to cause bleeding, after all. Generally a straightforward kind of thing. Which was why both mugger and victim froze in shock at the grating clash of metal on metal. That was not normal.

While the crook was still blinking in surprise, Ven darted forward, spurred by the pain in his arm. He sprinted out of the alley, using his good arm to shove the perp aside as he passed, trailing vermillion in his wake. As he ran, Ven pinched the slash shut as best he could, blood leaking hot and sticky through his shaking fingers.

One left turn and two flights of stairs later, Ven fumbled open the door to his family’s apartment with blood-slicked fingers. He kicked the door shut with a bang as he entered, thankful no one was home as he raced for the bathroom. Dizziness crept up on his heels, the floor swimming as he crashed to his knees and fumbled open the cabinet under the sink. It took three attempts before Ven’s trembling fingers managed to unlatch the first aid kid.

Ven shook his head, banishing the black spots that had been floating on the edges of his vision, and grabbed the small bottle of wound sealant. Following some awkward pressing up against the cabinet at strange angles to push the cut closed, and long after his shirt was soaked through with blood, Ven managed the seal the slash shut—albeit rather haphazardly—and still had some wound sealant left over. After capping the bottle and shoving the first aid kit back into its’ place, Ven put his head between his knees and breathed until the vertigo had mostly passed.

As his heart rate settled and the whirling room steadied, Ven’s mind drifted back to the fight, and the unexpected clang of metal striking metal. He sat up, letting his head fall back against the blood-streaked cabinet with a muffled thunk. Eyes catching on the blood slowly drying on his hand, Ven pushed the topic away for later contemplation and forced himself to his feet. He peeled off his shirt and dropped it into the sink, yanked on the cold water, and exited the bathroom, leaving the blood-crusted fabric to soak.

Twenty minutes later, Ven leaned back against the wall, letting the mop slip out of his grasp and clatter to the floor. Hopefully his mom wouldn’t think too hard about why he had changed his shirt, and the cabinet under the sink wasn’t quite as white as it had started out that morning, but the clean up was done. Slowly, Ven allowed his knees to buckle, sinking to the floor in a controlled collapse. He nudged the mop handle away with his foot, listening to the quiet clicking of the wood sliding over linoleum.

In the silence of an empty apartment, Ven finally let himself think. There’s metal in my arm. For a moment, Ven considered opening the cut back up, but quickly dismissed the idea. Dying of blood loss wasn’t worth getting another look at the plate in his arm, and he had just finished cleaning besides. He took a deep breath, forcing himself to stay rational. The plate was probably from some medical procedure done when he was too young to remember it. Ven pushed himself to his feet, heading for his room. There was an easy way to figure it out, and then he could go back to his life. Even if having metal in his arm and not knowing it was slightly creepy.

I feel like a cyborg now, he grumbled internally, flopping backwards onto his bed and ignoring the protesting creak it gave in complaint. He sat up after a moment of staring at the ceiling, crossing one leg over his lap as he swiped for the trim silver cylinder resting on his bedside table. After a press of his finger to the scanner on the tip of the slick metal wand, the holographic screen flared into view.

Ven increased the screen brightness with a loose gesture, dropping his hands into proper typing position a moment later. The keyboard materialized at his command, and from there Ven quickly brought up the internet and found his school’s website. Finding the page for students graduating in the 2146-2147 schoolyear took barely a second, and from there all he had to do was type in his name. Draven Carrick.

Ven clicked on the picture of him that popped up, sparing only a quick glance for the dark-haired, blue eyed face that stared back at him. He bypassed the tab that detailed his grades for the past schoolyear, not bothered to check his grades even in passing when senior year ended in two days. Instead, Ven headed straight for the section of his school page that detailed personal history. Height, weight, family members, etc. And there, the section for teachers to enter their key to see more information.

Disabling the firewall and slipping in took barely an effort, and finding his chip number was even easier. “‘E’ four two four ‘A’ ‘S’ eight zero,” Ven said aloud, grabbing a pen from his night table and scrawling the code onto his hand in smooth blue ink. He then closed out the school page and opened up a new site—the Iron Union’s official database. His fingers flew over the keyboard, quickly bringing him to the medical history of chip E424AS80.

Nothing.

Every appointment, every prescription, every doctor’s name and phone number, yes, but nothing about an implant. Ven considered his arm for a moment. “Am I supposed to believe I hallucinated that?” he questioned the limb sardonically. Ven wasn’t an idiot—he knew what he’d seen. There was metal in his arm, and he wanted to know why, for goodness sake. Finding the information really shouldn’t be so difficult.

Ven turned his eyes back to the screen, scanning the information once more. He hesitated, dropping his hands and letting the keyboard disperse. He could give up. Or he could hack the government’s official website. Ven didn’t even bother attempting to walk away and leave it alone. Prison, here I come, he thought, bringing his hands back up into position.

While, for obvious reasons, he’d never hacked into the government’s website before, Ven quickly caught on to the system. It was arranged in access level layers, beginning with the public face that anyone in the IU could see, even without logging in, and ending—presumably—with what was available to only the Iron Collective. Fairly straightforward, which Ven supposed made sense for a government that needed to keep track of so many people.

If, for whatever reason, the procedure that had put the metal in his arm was hidden, Ven fully expected it to be on the lowest security level outside of public access. But it wasn’t, nor was it in the next four levels. Ven entertained the notion of giving up, but he had already committed a felony. He might as well keep going.

After hacking his way through five more security levels, Ven finally found something new on his chip page, but it wasn’t the information he was searching for. Instead, it was a very, very, very detailed warning about what exactly the punishment would be for accessing his page without permission, blinking a furious scarlet and carrying the seal of the Iron Collective. It even carried the signatures of each of the five members that made up the collective, and Ven had been in school long enough to know that crossing them was no joke. “What the heck?” Ven muttered, disbelieving. “Did I mistype the chip ID?”

A full five minutes ticked by as Ven started at the screen—specifically, the Iron Collective’s seal. The sleek silver sword against a background of flame, set in a frame of brambles and scattered ruby protea blooms. The crest that adorned every flag, every press release, every government building. Strength, the seal said. I am lasting, I am powerful. Do not cross me. Ven’s urge to turn tail and flee before he was burned at the stake battled with the searing ember of curiosity that blazed in his chest, coaxing into flame the desire to find out what was so important on his page.

Before his mind became too entrenched in the debate, Ven clicked the button labeled ‘access’, which brought up a field for a password. Even as he was hacking his way in, Ven still tried to convince himself he was doing the right thing. It’s me this is about. Shouldn’t I have the right to know? Ven reasoned with himself. In the back of his mind, a different voice was already wondering if he would get a mugshot, or just plain shot.

Ven hacked his way through a small hole, restitching the code behind him as he snuck through layer after layer of security, apprehension growing with every trap he slipped. The protective coding was lethal. One mistake, and his whole system would be snapshotted, downloaded, and then mangled beyond use. It would take years upon years to undo to damage one mistake could cause, if he didn’t have to scrap the system altogether. Ven longed to turn back, but he was in too deep to backtrack.

It took a little over ten minutes to finally bust his way through the minefield of code. The page that greeted him was utterly unexpected. Ven had presumed some sort of file would be added to ‘medical history’ that hadn’t been there before. Most likely an experimental medical program that wasn't public knowledge. Instead, his whole page had transformed. The heading ‘Subject 24 - Draven Alastir Carrick’ stared back at him from the webpage. Ven swore incredulously, starting to read.

Part of Project Iron Curtain, twenty-fourth subject integrated into the program. Biological child of Gawen Kendrew Carrick and Aileen Evanna Finley (Carrick), brother of Caillen Fergus Carrick. Code constructed by Project Team Seachd. Implantation Procedure 373 minutes, no complications. Electronic Consciousness set for retrieval on October 28th, 2148.

Ven continued to read, hardly breathing as he tried to process. Phrases like thought process sequencing and neural algorithm leapt off the page, assaulting his eyes and sending his panic soaring higher, and higher, and higher. Almost unthinkingly, Ven navigated to the official project page and skimmed the summary. 30 electronic consciousnesses implanted in stillborns and sent out into the population. And Ven was one of them.

Without any decision to move, Ven found himself on his hands and knees, face hovering over his trash can as he attempted to breathe without vomiting. The urge to crawl out of his own skin and take off running thrummed in every pore. He was in someone else’s body.

They made movies about this stuff in the twenty-first century, didn’t they? Ven thought hysterically. He curled his hands into fists, relishing the grounding sense of his fingernails digging into his palms. Not his fingernails, not his palms.

Ven jumped up, ripping his shirt up over his head as he ran. He yanked on the shower as hot as it went and clambered in, standing under the scalding spray in a half-mad attempt to scour the feeling of wrong from his flesh. Closing his eyes, Ven breathed as slowly as he could manage, banishing all thoughts as the searing water pounded against his skin. When the feeling came crawling back, he impulsively turned the water as cold as it got, not quite stifling a yelp at the sudden temperature change.

After an undetermined amount of time spent standing in the shower, switching the water temperature between one extreme and the other when his thoughts started to spiral again, Ven got out. He dressed quickly, and returned to his room, trying to ignore the sense of strangeness squirming under his skin. Upon reaching his bedroom, Ven retrieved his computer stick and brought the screen back into view.

This time around, Ven read slowly, pausing every now and again to force back down the nausea that relentlessly attempted to crawl up his throat. He was still shaking slightly, and his mind felt as though it had been wrapped in cotton or plunged underwater, leaving him in a dizzying haze and feeling rather disconnected from his body, but better able to process the information. One thing became glaringly clear.

“I don’t exist,” Draven Carrick breathed into the silence.


Chapter Two

Ven remained jittery throughout the day. During dinner, he had to force himself to eat, since everything tasted like paper, and every slight noise or movement sent a jolt down his spine. As soon as he’d cleared enough of his plate to avoid suspicion, Ven excused himself and retreated to his room to think.

Once he shut the door, Ven sank down onto the mattress, staring listlessly into space. Hours later, and Ven still couldn’t fathom his accidental revelation. Then again, how was a person supposed to accept that they… weren’t? “I don’t exist,” Ven muttered, half bitter and half apathetic. It had become a sort of macabre mantra for him, a fleeting attempt to force some semblance of sense into the situation.

He twisted his wrist, clenched his fingers. Imagined metal plates sliding and clicking into place in a near-seamless mockery of the living flesh that concealed it. If he concentrated, Ven thought he might even be able to feel the subtle hum of an electric current under his skin, though it could just be a morbid flight of fancy. It had been there all along, after all.

Ven rubbed his fingers together, lightly feeling the rough pads of his fingerprints sliding together. Pressed a little harder, and met resistance. The metal hiding underneath his skin. Ven now knew, if he sliced deep enough, the skin on the pad of his thumb would part to show a glint of silver rather than the white of bone. Skin deep, he thought with a mournful kind of flippancy, not quite sure what he was referring to but feeling the phrase applied all the same.

After rubbing his fingers together one last time, Ven forcibly relaxed his hand, glancing toward the door of his room with a bit of guilt, as though he expected someone to be there watching him. There wasn’t. He sighed, looking away again. What now? Forgetting what he’d seen… it wasn’t a possibility, much as Ven wished it was.

For lack of any ideas, Ven opened up the webpage again, and reread the project details. Some things he’d known from skimming the page earlier, and some he wished he didn’t now—like the exact details of the wiring that connected the computer chip in an EC’s (his) brain to the physical functions of a (his) body. Partway down the page, a specific link caught his eye, referring to the ‘Retrieval Procedure.’ He clicked on it.

For the first time, Ven allowed himself to wonder why this project existed. Why he was what he was. He hadn’t read the mission statement yet—he’d avoided it. Maybe he shouldn’t have. He kept reading. He could look once he was done with this page. Retrieval.

There were thirty others, Ven had found out the minute he started reading. Others like him. Did they know, Ven wondered, brushing off the thought seconds later. He doubted it. He doubted his sanity, even. Being in some sort of freakish hallucination would seem more real than… whatever this was. Focus, he reminded himself.

The page went on to tell him that four subjects had been retrieved. The names were meaningless to him, but he memorized them anyway. Not quite sure why. A morbid trepidation was beginning to take root in his lungs. Retrieval of data, the page said, download of the consciousnesses. Disposal of vessels.

Killing, Ven realized. They’re talking about killing the ECs (us. me). If he did nothing, retrieval was his fate. If he said nothing, twenty-five nameless ‘subjects’ would die, too. Ven swallowed, hard. He’d already known he couldn’t just forget everything. This… this was more… messy, then he anticipated, though he didn’t really know why. Mindlessly, he opened up the mission statement for Project Iron Curtain.

“Weapons,” Ven muttered after a period of reading and processing (ha) in silence. “Of course it’s weapons.” He leaned back until he was flat on the mattress, staring at his ceiling, resolutely thinking of nothing at all. Trying to, at least. He covered his eyes with a hang flung dramatically over his face, and hissed through gritted teeth. “Just kill me now,” he almost moaned, realizing a moment later how dark that was considering the situation. Ven swore.

Without thinking too much about what he was doing, Ven sat up, grabbed his computer, and opened up a command prompt. He cracked his knuckles, arched his spine, and got to work.


With one final cursory sweep for any bugs, Ven activated his freshly-minted program. He watched lines of code stream down over the holographic screen, let himself get lost in spiraling white script against a black background, and then sent the device into sleep mode. The trim, silvery-slate stick was discarded on his bed in a deliberate act of carelessness as Ven stood.

Snagging the hook of his backpack by a finger, Ven hoisted it up and dumped the contents on the floor. There were only two days of school left—it wasn’t as if it mattered. Ven started packing.

He wasn’t dumb. He fully understood that doing nothing meant death. Whatever else might be going on, Ven wasn’t going to sit around and wait for that eventuality. So he packed, if rather mechanically (ha), and refused to think. He could figure things out once he was gone. Safe. Ish. For now, he sealed his thoughts away in the very back of his mind, and kept packing.

Once finished, he reopened his computer and he worked. The programs he created were limited only by his mind, complex algorithms taking shape under dancing fingers working late into the night. Hours passed while Ven buried himself under a tidal wave of binary and the other many languages of code, finally forcing himself to surface from his programming frenzy when he could barely keep his eyes open and his coding was starting to become sloppy. Even through the exhaustion, he itched to resume typing, but he deactivated the computer anyway. If he kept working now, he’d never stop. Ven went to bed.




The persistent, shrill whine of his alarm dragged Ven from an uneasy sleep. “Off,” he growled, clumsily shoving the bedcovers off of himself and half tumbling to the floor. He stubbed his toe on the bedframe as he stood, biting back a curse as he scrambled backwards until he hit the wall. He looked up, and his eyes landed on the deactivated computer sitting innocuously on his desk. Oh.

It wasn’t that he had forgotten, exactly, what he’d found out. More than it hadn’t quite registered until that moment, kept on the backburner of his mind and shrouded by residual drowsiness. Well, he was awake now. Ven shook off his uncertainty and flopped back down onto his bed, then sat up and grabbed for his computer.

It was a moment’s work to check on all the programs he had created the night before (earlier that morning, really). Everything was in place. Ven glanced around his room, quickly spotting the slick red card that was his phone lying on the floor. He stooped down to grab it.

Ven downloaded his programs onto his phone as he got dressed, stuck the device in his pocket, and slung his backpack carelessly over one shoulder. He didn’t even glance back towards his room, refusing to dwell on what the day would bring. He would survive. That was enough. That was what was important.

He took an energy bar with one hand, gave his mom a half-hug with the other arm, and made for the door as quickly as he could manage. On the threshold, Ven froze. He gritted his teeth and dug his fingernails into the heels of his hands, a sense of ‘holy crap what am I doing’ striking like a lightning bolt and leaving him all but swaying on his feet. He powered through it and kept going, doing his best to ignore the panicked alarm bells jangling in the back of his head that grew in volume with every step that he took.

Every building seemed huge and utterly new, the familiar path cold and unfriendly. He was running away, with only fifty seven dollars and twenty two cents, a bunch of computer programs on his phone, and a vague hope that other people would show up too. The alternative was being killed by the government, Ven reminded himself. His steps didn’t falter when he passed the alleyway where he had been caught the day before. The place where things started to change.

At the bus stop, Ven stuffed his hands in his pockets, toes hanging out over the curb, and tipped his head back to stare at the clear summer sky. A bird wheeled up above, and Ven’s gaze chased it lazily across the sky. The screech of the bus brakes brought his eyes back down to the ground, doors flipping open with a soft hiss to allow him and a handful of other students on. The bus was noisy and packed to the brim with rowdy students itching to be done with school year at last. A crumpled wad of paper barely missed hitting Ven in the shoulder as it sailed over the aisle. Ven swung his backpack into the first empty seat he found, plopping down next to it and leaning his head back against the rough slate faux-leather. “Sit down!” the bus driver bellowed, and they pulled away.

Ven slouched down in his seat and slid his phone out of his pocket. Unlocking the device and dimming his screen, Ven found and activated his new camera-scrambling program. Hacking the bus’ internal camera system confirmed it was live. The base function was performing—his screen was invisible in the camera’s view. What he was looking at couldn’t be seen.

Buildings and cars and trees flashed by outside as Ven busied himself by tapping out a backup for his phone and coding several layers of protection against infiltration. He’d remove it from the system entirely at a later time, when it didn’t matter as much. Ven’s trepidation kept mounting second by second, and his fingers kept slipping as he typed, which was unheard of. If there was one thing Ven always was, it was sure of himself. That surety had jumped out the window and run screaming into the distance about the time he figured out what he was. What, not who.

Ven tried not to wonder whether or not robots could feel emotion. He almost succeeded, too.

Breath catching in his throat, Ven gritted his teeth and curled his hands into fists. Fingernails bit into his hands as he briefly allowed himself to be swept away by the prospect of smashing open the window, jumping out, and taking off in a sprint. Away from everything, as if he wasn’t doing that already. Running all the way out of the country, out of this skin that didn’t belong to him. Ven’s awareness of the irrationality of imagining that if he just kept running none of his thoughts would catch up didn’t stop him from doing so all the same.

The creeping feeling that he was being increasingly impetuous didn’t break through Ven’s armor. He was being perfectly rational—running when someone was chasing you was a perfectly reasonable decision. Survival instincts, and all that.

It was easier to pretend he wasn’t running as hard and fast as he could from every discovery he’d made. Survival, running, planning for the future—all basic things. Not easy, but straightforward. Two sides of a coin, life and death, and Ven knew which one he wanted to be on. It was as easy as that. Much easier than trying to figure out if being able to breathe could make a machine alive.

Ven slammed the door shut on his thoughts and turned the key in the lock, barricading it with a mental dresser for good measure. Drowned everything in strings of code. Code was simple. There was no turmoil in code.

Ven valiantly ignored the irony in that thought.

The bus squealed to a halt in front of the school. There would be time to worry later. It was time to do the dance of normality, for possibly the last time.