Cyber Nation: Eidolon Division, #1

By Amy Sanderson

Zen is an Eidolon, one of the most advanced cyborgs in the world. Part corporate employee, part soldier, she protects the interests of Quantum Corporation in the city-state of Polity – and she's used to having them protect her.

 

Or she was.

 

Terrorist revolutionaries. A mysterious hacker. A corporation she can no longer trust – and a devastating flaw at the heart of every cyborg. The Eidolons are under siege and it's time for Zen to choose whose side she's on.

 

Whichever path she takes, one thing's for certain: both Zen and Polity will never be the same.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Amy Sanderson
• Release date: Oct 17, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201870744

Amy Sanderson

Amy has been writing for as long as she can remember, inspired by a childhood fascination with books. By the time she was fifteen and confronted with school 'careers guidance', she'd decided being an author was the only profession she could possibly enjoy - which, of course, led to a string of other roles, including Archaeology student, bookseller and library assistant. These days, she lives in the North Yorkshire countryside with her partner, where they run a bed & breakfast business and smallholding. When she's not working or writing, Amy enjoys reading, gaming, photography, and trying to pretend she's a grown-up.

Book preview

ONE

The city of Polity was created as a technological paradise, a place where want was extinguished, equality was guaranteed, and everyone had a say. From my position on the roof of one of its many towers, I could almost believe that dream had come true. It spread below me in a glittering web, neon and glass softened only by countless living walls and floating gardens, the black sea to one side and stark hills to the other.

I'd always thought it was a shame that a place so beautiful, built with such a utopian vision in mind, should be home to all the ordinary vices of humankind.

Because it was: for all the dreams of its founders, there was no escaping that. If Polity had been perfect, my job – as one of Quantum Corporation's cyborg Eidolons – wouldn't have existed. I was hardly a protector of the weak and innocent, but I knew my role had its merits. In a city like this, where corporations were the ones in charge whatever they might say to the contrary, someone had to keep them in business.

That bothered some of the Eidolons, I knew, but not me. Quantum had made this city and they'd made me; I was as much a part of Polity as it was possible to be. It wasn't just that the status quo brought security. I belonged to this place; it made me whole.

Unit D, in position. The voice in my head was crystal clear, despite the encrypted signal.

I know where you are, Dessa. I spoke aloud, the internal mic beneath the skin of my throat picking up the words. No need to whisper, or even to rely on thought-to-speech technology – there was no-one around to hear.

Zen. Dessa's voice was disapproving. She was the sweetest, gentlest soul most of the time – certainly too good for this line of work – but on a mission, she was all business. That's not how we operate.

I straightened. Sensors in my metal limbs relayed the movement to my human brain, but there was no fake sensation of flesh-and-blood muscles or joints. That would have been a pointless piece of nostalgia, along with pain and fatigue. I was glad I couldn't feel any of them.

If I'd been talking to anyone else, I would have stuck to my guns; for Dessa, I could tone down the attitude. Unit Z, in position. Ready on your mark.

Good. We go in ninety seconds.

I set a timer with a thought. I might not have an on-board AI the way Dessa did, but I was as capable with my neural implant as any other cyborg. As the seconds began to tick away, I stepped to the edge of the building and looked down. This was the HQ of one of Polity's many corporations, Sytosis, although the smaller scale of its building suggested they were a less successful – or less rapacious – company than some. There was a concrete plaza twenty storeys below me, with a row of holographic trees lining the edge of it and real greenery cloaking buildings on two sides. I could only pick out Dessa because my navigational system was in communication with hers; otherwise, even cyborg eyes couldn't see through her optical camouflage.

I scanned the plaza again – no movement – then the roof. I had a range of sensors available to me – radar, thermal imaging, vibration detection, microphones sensitive enough to detect even a nearby heartbeat – but from up here, nothing was as useful as simply hacking the building's internal cameras. That, I'd done already; the only ones registering any movement were down on the ground floor, and showed a handful of guards around the front desk. None of them were patrolling the building.

Thirty seconds left. I surveyed the bag of tools I'd brought up with me, assessing my options.

Fifteen seconds. I took three steps across the gravelled rooftop, to the steel access hatch I'd identified earlier. It had been welded shut, making my array of bolt cutters useless, but I still had something that would work.

Ten seconds. I'd wanted to rig the roof with explosives – even in a major structural collapse, I was unlikely to lose more than a bit of synthetic skin – but Dessa wouldn't let me. She was, as ever, the voice of caution.

Five seconds. I activated a protective filter over my vision, grabbed a portable cutting laser from the bag, and fired it up.

The cut was quick and clean. The laser was industrial strength, despite its size, and sheared through the metal hatch with ease. I kept the hole small to speed the job up, but when the circle of steel thumped down onto the floor below, the building still shook. The laser was already low on fuel. I tossed it to one side as it winked out, scooped up the submachine gun lying beside my bag, and dropped through the hole.

I hit the floor almost as heavily as the lump of metal from the hatch, the glass walls around me quivering. This was the penthouse: big corner offices looking out over Polity, a central reception area, and a single lift. I headed for that, strides eating up the office floor. There was no-one around and I was almost disappointed. I'd expected resistance, even if it was half-arsed.

Dessa's plan was simple: I entered from the top, and she from the bottom, her heavily armoured body perfectly suited to taking out the guards down there, just as I was suited to infiltration. We'd meet on the eleventh floor, subduing everyone we found on the way. I checked my sensors again, for movement or sound, but came up blank. Looked like we were in for an easy ride.

Gunfire echoed up through the building as I prised open the metal doors of the lift; it sounded like Dessa was having all the fun. I peered into the empty shaft – the lift itself was far below, out of sight – then slung the submachine gun over my shoulder. It was only a short jump to the lift cable, before I slid down into the dark.

***

I came out firing.

I'd detected the sound of company from several floors above, and by the time I reached the eleventh, I knew what I was up against – and it wasn't the human guards I'd spotted on the ground floor. Instead, when I smashed my way feet-first through the closed lift doors, I was faced with a row of combat androids, shoulder to shoulder. They started firing a hair after I did, and I rolled back into the lift shaft even before my spray of bullets hit them.

I grabbed the lip of the shaft with one hand, the other loosening the magazine in the submachine gun dangling from my shoulder. I was starting to wish I'd brought something with more stopping power, even if that would have made my infiltration more difficult. I slotted a new magazine into the gun, hearing the empty one clatter away down the lift shaft. Bullets pinged off the remains of the twisted steel door above me. There wasn't a single pause between them, the androids linked into a local net that allowed them to coordinate their fire. Even I couldn't withstand their barrage for long.

I launched myself upwards with one hand, flying right past the opening and grabbing the wall of the lift shaft. I swung through the mangled doors in the same manoeuvre I'd used to smash through them in the first place. The androids had made the mistake of advancing, and I slammed into them with both feet, sending half the line tumbling. I scrambled away, circuits and metal limbs crunching under my feet, and rolled behind the cover of a receptionist's desk.

The androids didn't pause. They were still firing as they turned, bullets shattering glass and blowing the front of the desk into splinters. I'd performed the briefest of hacks from the lift shaft, to make sure they didn't upload their video footage of my face to the cloud, but that was all I'd had time for. Fucking robots. Once they got going, they were completely implacable.

Unfortunately for them, once Dessa got going, she could almost be mistaken for one of them.

She came thundering down the corridor like a battering ram, making the whole building shake. Her cyborg AI only kicked in when she was in combat, and it was like watching a tornado in action. A tornado comprising half a tonne of metal and a whole fucking lot of weapons. She was awe-inspiring to watch – and, if you were in her way, downright scary.

She barrelled right into the androids, scattering them like bowling pins. There were thuds as they crashed into the walls, and a ringing noise as one went through a glass wall. Shards tinkled down around Dessa, but she ignored them, her face utterly blank. As I levered myself out from behind the desk, she flung her empty assault rifle to the floor and reached for a fallen android. Her hands closed around its head, fingers squeezing, the reflective face-plate cracking–

Hey. My voice cut through the grind of the androids trying to get to their feet. Dessa stomped on one of their legs, snapping it clean in half, then swung to me. I would never stop feeling unnerved by that look she got on her usually placid face, the one that said she'd quite happily crush anything in her way. Including me, if I wasn't careful.

But I knew how to work with Dessa; it was one of the reasons we made such a good team. I held up a hand, palm out, and said again, Hey. Dess. It's me.

She blinked once, her fingers loosening. The android's head fell to the shredded carpet, and she blinked again. Zen?

It was always painful, watching her claw her way out of this battle fog. It took a while for her personality to reassert itself, for her combat AI to sink back into the darker recesses of her brain. Dessa never remembered what she'd done in these fogs – or she claimed not to. As far as I knew, no-one had ever argued.

Dessa physically shook herself. She looked down carefully, making note of where her feet were, and what surrounded her. Putting the pieces together.

Just androids, I assured her, because it was always easier that way. A glance at the building's hacked security cameras told me whoever had been downstairs was also long gone, but Dessa didn't need to know that right now.

Right. Dessa retrieved her assault rifle, sliding a new magazine out of the compartment in her right thigh and clicking it into place. Have you scouted ahead?

I hadn't had chance, but that didn't mean I'd been idle. Read-outs flashed across my vision, lines and charts and scrolling text, the sensors in my cyborg body relaying their findings to me via my neural implant. If there was anyone else on this floor, they were standing very, very still.

We're good, I said, automatically checking my own weapon, then slinging it over my shoulder. This way.

The eleventh floor looked like all the rest in the building, apart from the penthouse, with boxy glass offices and a reception desk of synthetic wood – which we'd just blown to pieces. The only difference was a single corridor on the west side of the building, blank white walls leading to a heavily reinforced door. I didn't need to check the schematics of the place to know that was our destination.

Dessa laid a hand on it, taking readings. I could knock it down, she said, but she sounded dubious. My own sensors said the door was six inches thick and the walls of the corridor were reinforced concrete. Dessa could punch her way through, but it would take time.

Instead, I touched the electronic lock. It was designed to scan voice and retina, whilst also networking with the nearest neural implant to download an authentication key. Ripping it out of the wall would trigger a failsafe that would lock the door down completely, and probably fry anyone who touched it.

Which would have been illegal, in most parts of the world. In Polity, corporate security overrode nearly everything else. Cite a few precedents for protecting sensitive R&D or customer data and, to deter thieves, you could get away with anything from brain-frying firewalls to the combat androids we'd just faced. Taking on one of the big corps was only for the foolhardy – or, in our case, those from an even bigger corp.

What do you think? Dessa asked.

I was already connecting to the door's local network, searching out a backdoor or exploit. Code spooled across my vision in glowing strings: a major firewall and one or two really nasty viruses, designed to latch onto anyone who tried to hack through. It had been cleverly designed, but it wasn't impenetrable. Nothing was.

I realised Dessa was waiting for an answer. Do you even have to ask? I replied, and dived.

***

It's not standard practice to carry out a fully immersive dive to hack something as ordinary as a locked door. VR has its uses, for everything from education to escape, but most people see the majority of the net as windows and text and images, or as lines of code. This, though...

I wasn't sure where my technique had come from. I could of course run through the code manually, changing a parameter here, a piece of syntax there. When I was dealing with something complex, though, I automatically sank into VR, into my own little personalised corner of the net. It was, in a manner of speaking, where I stored my tools.

A blink, and the corridor with Dessa standing in it was gone. I was in the middle of my workroom: a white cube, feeds glowing softly on the walls, and a single long holotable in the centre, spread with simulated papers. There was a faint, soft tug in the back of my mind as my neural implant fully interfaced with the locked door – and then it was time to go.

In my workroom, I had a virtual version of my usual body; beyond it, I was a glowing, roughly human shape, androgynous and anonymous. In the distance, a vast city stretched to every black horizon: the rest of the Internet, every building representing a server and every island a private network. Between me and it lay a single glowing portal, a representation of the locked door inside Sytosis HQ. Neon lines arced around it in all directions, forming an impenetrable barrier. Only a single one shot off towards the city, which was a sign of how paranoid the heads of Sytosis were. They clearly believed their company was more likely to be attacked online than in the flesh; a single connection between their server and the Internet should have been easier to defend from outside incursions.

That only worked if the attack came from outside, though, or if the attacker cared about being found out – and I didn't. All I had to do was disrupt that flow of data, and the Sytosis servers would be completely disconnected from the outside world. Until they could physically get more guards or androids here, we were free to carry out our job.

I cut the line. I'd expected the alarms, which blared pointlessly all across the building. I hadn't expected the stingers.

I knew my physical body, still standing at Dessa's side, was swearing aloud. In VR, the stingers zipped towards me, little attack programs triggered by my cutting their link to any outside networks. If I'd been working purely in code, I knew I'd have seen them as discrete programs, perhaps attempting a hack against me in return. My VR system depicted them as gleaming wasps, converging on me as though I was a piece of rotten fruit.

I batted the first one away. They were little more than annoyances, my own firewalls keeping them out, but I didn't have time for them when I had the fearsomely complicated firewall around the door to break through.

It was time to release the bull.

Bull had started life as a joke. Niobe, the self-proclaimed best coder in our unit, had challenged me to hack through a new firewall she'd developed, a task she'd wagered would take a full forty-eight hours. I'd spent half that creating Bull, an attack program that hadn't neatly picked through Niobe's impenetrable maze of code to find an exploit, as she'd expected me to do, but had instead stampeded right over it. In that iteration, he'd taken the form of a minotaur, but since then, he'd gone through a few changes.

I couldn't remember making all of them. Bull's AI had taken on a life of its own over the years, and whilst he wasn't self-aware, I was certain he'd made some of the improvements himself. In VR, he wore a bull's shape, with fiery hooves to crush minor programs and massive horns to scoop up others. And wings, which I knew I hadn't added, but which swept everything else away.

I let Bull do his thing, roaring past me in a thunder of hooves. The stingers went for him, but I knew they wouldn't have much luck. Bull's iron hide in VR was a good representation of just how impregnable his code was.

And with them out of the way, I headed for the door.

It was almost hidden by the tangled firewall, which formed an endless, interlocking chain. Even the best chain has its weak link, though, and as I swung round to the other side of the mass, I saw it.

It was dim within the rest of the glowing lines and almost invisible; only long practice allowed me to see it so quickly. The slightest misconfiguration of the firewall had taken place, probably because some programmer had got sloppy. All I had to do was create a packet of data that wouldn't trigger the firewall's defences and send it through – and, in VR, to merely touch the broken link.

Just like that, I had access to the door's system, as though I'd been an authenticated user all along. The firewall didn't so much as flicker, but the stingers vanished and Bull rumbled to a stop, snorting. I flicked out of VR, knowing from the expectant look on Dessa's face that I'd been in there barely half a minute – and hearing the door in front of us click open.

TWO

THREE DAYS EARLIER

The coffee in Cafe Krakow tasted like shit. I stared into my cup, seeing neon lights dancing on the surface, shining through the grubby front window from an advertising drone outside. I dropped a spoon into it, splintering the reflection, and pushed it aside.

Shit coffee, but I knew why Dessa liked this place. It was full of loners and misfits, for one thing, and everyone pretended we weren't there. The owner also didn't charge for use of the power outlets.

There was a faint hum as Dessa plugged her main battery into the socket, and the lights dimmed. There were grumbles from some of the other patrons, and the owner coughed loudly from behind the counter, but no-one even bothered to look up. Free power was nothing to be sniffed at for a cyborg, when we'd have to go back to HQ otherwise, but my own batteries held a far longer charge than Dessa's did. I just came for the pierogi.

I bit into one, rolling the dumpling's pork filling around my mouth. I'd stopped feeling guilty about eating in front of Dessa, despite the fact she looked envious every time. As an early cyborg, she didn't have a digestive system and probably never would. For all the advances in our technology, Dessa didn't like change, which meant she'd stick with her clumsy combat body even if she had the chance to do otherwise. It was a wonder she'd become a cyborg at all.

But I'd learnt that if a cyborg didn't volunteer the story of how they became cyberised, you didn't ask. Dessa's was still a mystery to me and would stay that way as long as she chose.

Dessa cleared her throat. Do you want something else to drink?

I looked down at my coffee, which was now cold and unappealingly greasy. I'm fine. What's the mission?

Dessa's eyes went a touch out of focus as she studied her retinal display, then flicked sideways. A flashing beacon popped up in the corner of my vision, hovering above the cup beside my left hand. A message, sent over a heavily encrypted, extremely short-range network. I opened it with a glance and blue-white text started scrolling, superimposed over one half of Dessa's face.

I closed it, focusing on her instead. Just tell me.

I could see she was about to argue, but the impulse was gone as soon as it arrived. We had this conversation every time we shared a mission. Dessa played by the book; we would have gone back to HQ to discuss this mission if she'd had her way. I, on the other hand... It wasn't about breaking the rules. I could follow orders and my superiors knew it. This was for Dessa's benefit: she was the one who pined for some semblance of normal humanity, for living like a skin again. This was the only way I could find of giving it to her.

Sytosis Inc. Dessa folded her huge hands neatly on the table, the carbon fibre digits interlaced. Have you heard of them?

No. I could look them up with a thought, but that wasn't why we were here. I wanted Dessa's take on this.

They're a neurotech company based in Indigo District. Research and development, mostly – they do the research, then sell the findings to the highest bidder.

So far, so ordinary. Polity had thousands of similar corporations, our own being just one of them. The difference was that Quantum made use of their own research, because they made use of everything that crossed their collective desks; if they weren't always the 'highest bidder', that was only because they had a vested interest in promoting a healthy ecosystem of research institutions and rival businesses from which they could then pluck the choicest spoils. Even the biggest corporation in the world had to make some concessions to avoiding an overwhelming monopoly in every sector, even if they were perfectly capable of one.

Research into what? I asked.

Neural implants, Dessa said. I could hear the shrug in her voice, but she didn't make it physical. The fact that Dessa looked more like an armoured exosuit or a combat android than a woman made her uncomfortable. When she wasn't working, her every movement was controlled, careful. Nothing sudden, nothing unnecessary. I'd never been sure whether she didn't want to scare people, or if it was a hopeless attempt to fit in.

It sounded like Dessa didn't have anything more on Sytosis. There were dozens of implant research corps in Polity, even if none of them were as advanced as Quantum. Perhaps Sytosis were onto something they'd refused to part with by conventional means, though, and QuanCorp wanted them out of the way – because I could see what was coming.

Standard infiltration, Dessa said. We're to retrieve a physical hard drive and scorch the servers.

Scorch – upload a virus that would wipe out their data, in other words. Quantum was just as advanced in that field as they were in neurotech; once we'd done our job, Sytosis would have a hard time recovering a single file.

But that wasn't my concern. Quantum had made me, and for all intents and purposes, they owned me. Even if they hadn't, I was a member of Eidolon Division and I did what I was told.

The lights brightened as Dessa disconnected her power supply. Her eyes unfocused again as she ran diagnostics, checking battery levels and hydraulics. As she stood, pushing back the two chairs she'd been perched on, I caught a glimpse of something in the mission briefing, which I'd begun idly scrolling through.

Are you coming? Dessa loomed over the table, a monolith of black carbon fibre and titanium, her human face looking far too small at its peak.

I paused the text, catching sight of a line that I knew wouldn't show up in Dessa's briefing. This one was solely for me.

Yeah, I'm coming. I slid out of my seat, a virtual tip jar flashing in front of my eyes. I watched it fill up, with far more dollars than strictly necessary for a cup of shit coffee and a plate of pierogi. Dessa might technically get free power in here, but she more than made up for it.

I grabbed hold of her elbow. It was like tugging on a brick wall, but she let me spin her around. It's a cafe, not a charity, Dess. Let's go.

Dessa threw a few more dollars into the jar and it winked out. I opened the cafe door, stepping onto a street thick with pedestrians and drones and androids. Not many cyborgs, though. We were a rare breed.

Dessa called for me to wait, but I was already moving out of audible range, sending my apology over our shared network instead. She sent back a sniffy, "You could have just said goodbye", which echoed in my ear as clearly as though she stood right next to me.

The Terrier wants me, I sent back, which didn't get a reply. Dessa didn't approve of the nickname, but I didn't care. As long as I was on the move, nothing else mattered. There were some people you didn't fuck around with and our boss, Lillian West, was one of them.

***

Quantum Corp HQ was a gleaming monument to everything Polity stood for. It was sleek and forbiddingly beautiful, all glass and steel in a district where many other corporations had clothed their buildings in living plants to improve air quality and soften the city. It was also the tallest skyscraper in Polity, soaring into the low-hanging cloud like a shard of ice.

Eidolon Division was on the eighty-seventh floor. I took the lift up the outside of the building, watching Polity's grid pattern resolve below me as I shot into the sky. Indigo District, where Quantum was based, was ringed in blue-purple lights. As dusk fell, its towers were lit up with thousands of white-glowing windows. Red and blue streets wound between them like rivers, some at ground level, and some snaking several storeys into the air to curve across the city in great, vibrant arcs. There were cheaper districts in Polity, where the buildings didn't shine and the streets weren't clean enough to eat off, but you couldn't see them from here.

There was a delicate ping as the lift arrived. I stepped out, feeling the whole car bounce behind me. One heavy-duty cyborg was pushing the weight limit; when Dessa and I came up here together, we travelled in separate lifts.

The eighty-seventh floor was a labyrinth of offices and labs, but you wouldn't know it from reception. There were scanners around the entrance, checking for everything from concealed weapons to malware, and compartments in the lobby's walls hid combat androids on permanent alert. All of that was hidden, though. A visitor was greeted only by the gleaming black marble floor, the huge curve of the stainless steel reception desk, and the man behind it who was so perfect he looked sculpted.

He might have been, for all I knew. Hiring based on physical appearance was illegal in Polity, but Quantum had numerous grants for its employees. The company would pay for upgraded neural implants, cosmetic surgery, fitness programs and personal trainers, fertility treatments, even haircuts. Company perks, if you read the brochures, but they always seemed to steer Quantum's employees in a certain direction, turning them into perfect, identical robots. That was one advantage of being a cyborg. There were so few of us that we were actually unique.

I strode past the reception desk, knowing the combat androids would measure my every step. The receptionist glanced up, frowning. Even within the closed confines of Quantum, Eidolon Division was a hidden world, secretive and self-contained. Despite the existence of our division becoming public knowledge in the years since I'd been cyberised – which was partly my fault – the management still preferred us to come in via the stairwells and cargo lifts, not the front door. Some days, I followed that directive; others, I got tired of allowing them to pretend I didn't exist.

I nodded to the receptionist. He carefully smoothed his forehead, knowing it was better than a middle finger.

Floor eighty-seven had a design almost like an ammonite's shell, curving in on itself to reach a secret heart. Lillian's office was halfway round the outer perimeter, down a long, plushly carpeted corridor – and there was someone outside the door.

Eidolon Division contained twenty-six cyborgs, our alphabetical names denoting our commission dates, making Dessa early and me the very latest and last. Valen was a couple of years older than I was, and something of a mystery to the rest of the unit. Most of us had obvious functions – combat, infiltration, defence, jobs a major corporation that wanted to protect its interests would have plenty of use for. Valen, on the other hand, was slender and refined, his ash-blond hair brushing his collar, his charcoal suit so fitted it might have been sewn onto him. He called himself a diplomat, but I knew some of the Eidolons had their doubts – there were things you could use a pretty face like that for, and they didn't involve much talking.

I'd always had the feeling Valen was exactly what he professed to be, though: someone who knew people, who could move in any circle he chose and always make friends. That was a skill most Eidolons would envy.

Valen had just left Lillian's office. I stopped a few paces away, letting him come to me. He was half a head taller, but his hands were smooth, his complexion perfect. I had gun oil on my fingertips, a packet of cigarettes in the pocket of my jacket – good for the occasional bribe, even if I didn't have much interest in smoking them myself. I might be the culmination of Quantum's cyborg program, but I felt like a thug in comparison to Valen.

Lillian's waiting for you, he said. His accent was Scandinavian, his words clipped. I knew he'd never use the Terrier nickname.

What are you doing here? I asked, as he started to walk away.

Valen waved a hand over his shoulder without looking back. My job.

I entered the office without knocking. Lillian had her back to me, but her reflection in the exterior wall of glass was as clear