Warden 4

WARDEN 4
CHRONICLES OF A CYBORG BOOK 4
Isaac Hooke


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1
Rhea strode beneath the arching hallways of that government office known as Parliament Building. Around her, corridors occasionally branched off into other rooms and hallways.
Will was with her, along with Horatio and Renaldo. None of them had any weapons—at Aradne’s main gate, they had been forced to give them up. When they later reached the perimeter of the parliamentary area, they’d also been required to surrender any electronic devices other than AR goggles. Their bodies had been scanned for hidden gadgets, and when the searches turned up negative, they were allowed inside.
Rhea had been a bit worried that the scans would pick up the nano technology that inhabited her body, but apparently while dormant the machines were indistinguishable from the metal of her armor.
She wore a hooded cloak as usual, but no other clothing underneath—she didn’t need any, since her sleek, lithe robotic body was essentially genderless, with no genitals, and only small bumps in the breast region. It was like she was wearing a suit of polished, skin-tight plate armor.
Two armed robots provided escort on either side—the machines had made it clear from the very beginning that they weren’t there for her protection, but rather to ensure she didn’t get up to no good.
Another robot walked ahead of her, leading the group. This machine was entirely unarmed and possessed a video screen attached to its head. On the screen, a woman’s face droned on about the purpose of each room, and any history associated with it.
Mayor Grandas had arranged this guided tour of the Parliament Building for Rhea. Ordinarily the dome-shaped structure, along with all the surrounding governmental grounds, were off limits to ordinary citizens, but since Rhea was hardly ordinary—she had the digital key to the city, after all, and a direct line to the Mayor—it took only a quick call to set things up.
The guide robot droned on as it led them into a smaller hallway near the heart of the structure. DragonHunter, a sympathetic hacker from Rust Town, had procured a security camera map of the compound from one of his hacker friends in Aradne. Horatio had integrated the data with their HUDs, so that whenever Rhea glanced at her overhead map, she saw all the camera locations marked off. It was quite useful, because the actual micro cameras embedded in the walls were the size of pinpricks, and very difficult to detect without special equipment. She’d essentially have to operate her vision in zoom mode the whole time, while piping in the video feed from Will or Horatio into a different portion of her HUD so she could view herself from their perspective and still navigate—a rather disorienting way to walk, to say the least.
In addition to the surveillance cameras, the map also indicated the wireless access points of the local encrypted network, which was inaccessible to her. These wireless nodes weren’t to be confused with the standard access points, similarly scattered throughout the building, that connected the building to the outside Internet.
The roof was relatively low here, compared to the rest of the compound; according to the map, a local access point awaited ahead at the convergence of two intersections.
She saw it a moment later: a tiny square-shaped object secured to the ceiling.
That one looks like a good candidate, Rhea transmitted over the encrypted mental channel she shared with her companions. There’s only one camera nearby. DragonHunter, any luck?
Nope, DragonHunter replied from where he was safely holed up in his Rust Town residence. He had tried to take control of the cameras as he had done when she’d broken into city hall, but he’d quickly reported that their cybersecurity forces had patched the backdoors. When Rhea departed, he was attempting to find a workaround. Sorry. You’re on your own.
I’ll take care of the camera, Will sent.
Rhea nodded.
Tilting her upper body away from the hidden camera, she focused on her bicep, and the nano machines there curled the armor backward, revealing the hidden compartment within. Her armor had hidden the stack of small disks inside from the sentries who had scanned her at the parliamentary perimeter earlier—to their scans, the devices would have appeared to be part of her integrated circuitry.
She glanced at Will.
He was casually walking up to the wall, as if pretending to be fascinated by the hidden camera there.
“What are you doing?” one of the armed robots asked him.
“Is this a hidden camera I see?” he said loudly. “I love cameras!” He started waving at it as he continued to approach.
“Step away from the wall,” the armed robot ordered.
But Will ignored the command.
Rhea waited until Will’s face was pressing right up against the pinprick-sized hole in the wall, then she slid three disks from the stack. These were upgraded variants of the CommNixers she had used when she’d infiltrated city hall. DragonHunter had found a flaw in the code of the security robot models known to patrol these grounds; by transmitting a particular sequence of packets directly into their comm nodes over the same robot-to-robot network the machines utilized—which bypassed certain security checks—the upgraded CommNixers would trigger a reboot. She’d have to attach the disks to their heads to do it, but once contact was made, the robots would remain offline for a full minute while they rebooted.
The armed machines raised their rifles and pointed them at Will. “Step away—”
Rhea tossed two of the disks at them in rapid succession, then swiveled her body toward the guide robot and launched the third.
The magnets activated in midair, so that when the devices clanged into the heads of their respective targets, they held fast.
The robots instantly slumped.
Rhea sealed her right bicep armor and rushed forward to the wireless access point.
She focused on her left bicep as she neared, and the nano machines slit the armor open to reveal another