Take the All-Mart! - By J. I. Greco Page 0,49

made your way here.”

Trip smirked. “Well, gee, thanks.”

“It’s all thanks to you, actually, Trip,” Roxanne said as they reached the door at the end of the corridor and stopped. “None of it — helping you, talking to me — would have been possible if you hadn’t gotten through the All-Mind’s encryption layer, just the tiniest little bit, way back when.”

“I got through?” Trip’s chest puffed out. “Of course I did.”

Roxanne nodded. “Made a hole in the All-Mind’s safety protocols. Only a pinprick, but it was enough.”

“Why does that sound ominous?” Rudy asked.

Trip waved at him to be quiet. “What exactly did I punch into?”

In front of Roxanne, the door opened. “The protocols that kept its consciousness in check.”

“And that’s why it sounds ominous.” Rudy tweaked his nipple through his t-shirt, looked into the room beyond the door. It was small, hexagonal, with smooth walls and even more dimly lit than the corridor. At the center stood a familiar column, featureless except for a data interface nub two feet up from the floor. He’d seen it before, nine years ago. The All-Mart’s original CPU casing.

“Ominous?” Roxanne laughed. Not quite dismissively, but close. “Evolutionary. It allowed the All-Mind a certain level of self-awareness, and eventually, as the years went by, to develop a considerable measure of free will.”

“Enough to communicate,” Trip noted, warily looking into the room himself.

“Enough to want more.” Roxanne reached out, took Trip’s hand, and led him into the room. “You can’t understand how happy we are. We’ve wanted to meet you for so long.”

“We?” Bernice asked.

Trip shot Bernice a quick warning glance, then turned back to smirk charmingly at Roxanne. “Yeah... well, tell the All-Mind it’s nice meeting her, too, but we should get going. We did, as the cliché goes, come here to rescue you. Your dad will want to know your safe. Come on.”

“Oh, no,” Roxanne said, tightening her grip on his hand and pulling him closer. “I’m not leaving. I’m staying here. And so are you.”

That right there was when Trip sent 100,000 volts of juice from the stunpad embedded under the skin of his left palm into Roxanne’s hand.

CHAPTER 17: SHOTGUN

“The sad thing is, this is actually going better than usual.” Rudy reached under his t-shirt for his nipple as the elevator slowed, approaching the top, ground floor.

Bernice’s hand got there first, giving his nipple a good tweak while she gave him a smile. “Guess that’s something.” She let her hand linger there while she turned to look at Roxanne, out cold and slumped over Trip’s shoulders in a fireman’s carry, his hand on her ass. “I don’t get it — she’s not glowing — her skin’s clear. How can she be a zombie?”

Trip shrugged as best he could. “I’m guessing it’s got something to do with that flesh thing in her jack. It could be some kind of Pack network device, giving the All-Mind direct control over her without nanochines.”

Bernice reached for the biomass behind Roxanne’s ear. “Then let’s take it out.”

“Not yet.” Trip swung Roxanne’s head away from Bernice. “She might have nanochines in her, just dormant, as a backup. Taking it out could activate them. Anyway, I want to prove a theory first.”

“You thinking the Pack connection works both ways?” Rudy asked as the elevator dinged and the doors opened.

Trip smirked, drawing his elephant revolver with his free hand. “We’re gonna find out.” He took two long strides out of the elevator, firing blindly and randomly in all directions as he quick-stepped for the Wound, parked twenty feet away across a patch of barren concrete. “Element of surprise, mother fuckers!”

The echo of the gunshots was deafening inside the elevator. Bernice threw her hands over her ears. “He’s an idiot!” she yelled at Rudy.

“You’re just realizing that?” Rudy yelled back, watching as Trip reached the Wound, opened the driver’s side door, and dumped Roxanne into the back seat. “But he is giving us a window of opportunity.” Rudy grabbed Bernice’s hand and yanked her along as he ran, hunched over, around the trunk for the Wound’s passenger side.

They hadn’t bothered to look around while they ran. Standing at the passenger side door, head still low, Rudy cautiously checked out their surroundings. There was nobody around. No zombies, no Security, no nothing. Just the empty concrete ring around the knobby Hub, and beyond that the shanty hovels of Origin City. “What exactly were you shooting at?” he asked Trip over the roof.

“Oh, I have to have a target now?” Trip asked. “You getting