Technosis: The Kensington Virus Read Online Free PDF Page B

hunting.”
    ∞
    It had taken four soldiers to haul Jamie off of the bodies where he was sawing through wrists with his knife. Once he realized who was grabbing him he did not resist, but he did look back at the pile of quivering bodies with an undisguised loathing. In a gun metal green room they strapped him to a steel chair that was bolted to the floor. They took off the goggles, which were registering no incoming messages, and then they left. He sat and waited.
    General Talbot, accompanied by Commander Halle, came into the room. The general was looking at Jamie with interest. Jamie was staring at the far wall.
    “How did you know to shoot them in the head?” the general asked.
    “I didn’t,” Jamie said.
    “But you shot five of them in the head and stabbed seven in the skull with your knife.”
    “Yes.”
    “You hesitated on the first one; what happened there?”
    “I’d never killed before.” Jamie shrugged.
    “Why did you start?”
    Jamie thought about this for a moment. “She was complaining about her ex. It reminded me of my ex-wife. She sent me messages like that.”
    “Then you fired.”
    “Yes, then I fired.”
    “What were you thinking when you did it?”
    “Which time?”
    “Any time.”
    Jamie hesitated.
    “What were you thinking?”
    “I wasn’t.”
    “What…”
    “I saw my ex-wife,” Jamie admitted. “I saw her sending me those messages still. I knew you couldn’t just kill them, you couldn’t just destroy the brain, you had to get the technology away from them.”
    The general was silent for a moment. “Dr. Baxter, whatever you are, you are a natural. It took us three months to come up with the head, hands and tech protocol. You didn’t waste a bullet or a motion. The only thing you wasted time on was the hands. If you had a bigger knife you could’ve done that, easily. How would you feel about helping us hunt down the KVs and find the source of this thing?”
    “I’m in, but on one condition.”
    “What’s that?”
    “I get a machete.”
    Jamie, despite his bravado, collapsed moments after the general dismissed him. Hands caught him before he fell and he felt his body being lifted and carried away. His body, not an ideal specimen prior to his induction into Cyber Operations, was atrophied and his joints inflamed. The only comfort he had as his mind receded into the darkness of exhaustion was the satisfaction of having finally acted. In that place where dreams unload the luggage of life Jamie could see his ex-wife among the army of the texting undead. He was thrashing his way through a sea of texting, complaining bodies, sending heads, hands and tech spinning away. Moving purposefully toward the one, the first, the unrelenting. When he arrived there he made no preamble, no statement. He thrust with precision, he sent heads, hands and text on their separate way with no satisfaction. Just the knowledge that what he had done was a mercy; even if it was only a mercy to himself and the rest of the world. Jamie’s eyes flickered open briefly to see a fluid dripping into his arm through an IV. Then there was dreamless sleep.
    As before, Jamie’s world became a series of brief, vivid moments, separated by long gaps of unconsciousness. Of the more memorable moments were the ones where he awoke screaming, his body on fire. Med techs, and others – who he hoped to be qualified physicians - hovered over him and spoke in hushed tones. Decisions were made and something warm and soothing sent his burning and frayed nerves back to the land of peace. Then there came the moment when he woke to a world without pain, without noise and without hovering faces. Jamie looked around, the room was operating theater green and the bed he was on was not a bed, but a table. It was the sort of table upon which surgeries were done. Jamie was alone, strapped to the table naked, except for a sheet covering him .
    A tall man in a blue operating theater suit, with an ID clipped to his chest and insignia on