More than anything, Revenant wanted to kill all of these damn skinbags. They claimed that they were going to help, yet that infernal virus was still there… Worse, he was now vulnerable to having his processor overridden and his systems tampered with as well, no thanks to Colomar and her security device. He hated how helpless he was. He was their experiment now, just as he'd been at Hammond for so many years.
There was nothing he could do but watch as Torc stood next to him, rearranging and manipulating those holographic displays. The assassin had no way of knowing what Torc was doing- he knew very little about his own design. The corporation made it a point to keep that information from him; it had kept him dependent on them, indefinitely. For all he knew, the scientist could be immobilizing him, or causing his systems to overheat, or reinstating the inhibitor program that made him believe he was human…
The scientist now had seventeen holographic screens displayed in front of him. Most of them showed computer code; the bottom row was wiring diagrams and electrical schematics. He muttered to himself incoherently as he scrolled through the various displays in no discernible pattern. Wattson didn't seem to have any difficulty keeping up with the eccentric scientist- her eyes darted back and forth between the screens as he worked, mouth agape in fascination.
The tension in Revenant's posture was obvious. He was fighting the instinct to go on the offensive… It didn't feel good, sitting still, waiting while a strange cyborg and an enemy combatant picked apart his code.
"I used to hate it when they took my syncording before the Games," Crypto muttered in a low voice, barely above a whisper. "It was weird, you know, to think that someone was looking at my consciousness, in a digital form. My thoughts, my memories, everything that makes me, me. It's like… being taken apart from the inside."
Revenant turned to glance at Crypto in surprise. The hacker met his eyes and winked.
"You don't know anything, skin-suit."
Despite the unfriendly words, the simulacrum's demeanor was unusually calm, his voice devoid of its typical threatening undertone.
Crypto nodded. "Sure I don't."
"Ah, for crying out loud," Torc suddenly exclaimed. He threw his hands up in the air in a gesture of frustration at the latest display of code on his holographic screens. "What two-hundred-year-old, obsolete programming language is this?!"
Wattson frowned at him. "That isn't a very nice thing to say, you know."
With a friendly smile, she turned her attention to the assassin. "It's okay, Revenant. Obsolete machines are always designed better than the newer ones!"
Revenant didn't answer. He acted as if the engineer didn't exist- as was becoming a pattern between them, the simulacrum had no clue how to respond to her.
"I need a rubber duck," Torc grumbled, shaking his head.
Cade looked up from his handheld computer for a second, laughing. Crypto, too, chuckled. "Yeah… I'll bet you do."
Wattson looked back and forth between them in confusion. It seemed that they had some kind of inside joke, which she wasn't privy to. People and social situations were perplexing… Electricity, with all of its pathways and purposes, was much more orderly.
Torc turned his back to his displays for a moment, shaking his head to clear it. This was uncharted territory for him- and not only due to his lack of familiarity with the specific language in which Revenant's code was written. There were so many differences in design - mechanical, electrical, even in terms of the physical structure of the neural network - between modern simulacrums and this one.
While the scientist tried to find new ways to piece the information before him together into a desired result, Wattson diligently continued to study the displays. She rocked back and forth on her feet and hummed as she went over the intricate, incredible details of the complex system.
"Shut up," Revenant growled at her. "How much longer is this going to take?"
The engineer ignored him- she was too focused on something displayed on one of the bottom screens to notice his rudeness. She went quiet, eyebrows knit in concentration. Without thinking, she reached out to expand the view of the model, and quickly remembered that she couldn't interact with Torc's interface.
"Hmmm. Pardon-"
She tapped the scientist on the shoulder. Torc turned toward her with a raised eyebrow.
"This circuit, here- this is to send information to a receiver somewhere else, yes?"
"Huh. You know, I think you're right," he replied. "Well, with the latest simulacrums that the Defense Force is using, that's not unusual. They have a- a sort of a failsafe: when they take critical damage, a program kicks in and transmits all of the data in their processor back to the hub from which their orders are relayed. Makes it easier to have their replacement pick up right where they left off…"
The scientist raised one hand to his chin, eyes wandering aimlessly up to the ceiling as a flood of poorly organized thoughts rushed into his mind.
Cade had been intently focused on a video game that he was playing on his handheld computer, but when he caught a glimpse of the display Torc was studying, he suddenly stood and walked to that side of the room. The handheld computer dropped lightly from his hand and lay on the table, forgotten. Crypto tilted it toward him to see what his friend had been doing.
"Cade, are you seriously using a Raticate? Are you an idiot?"
"You see that?" The enforcer pointed to another electrical layout, below the screen that had Torc's attention. Crypto's remark about his gaming strategy went unacknowledged.
"The data is cycled. It's periodically sent and received at predetermined times… Could be how they send him orders, and check to see when he's carried them out...?"
Torc shook his head. "No, no, that would be a much simpler feedback loop. It wouldn't require anywhere near this much power, either…"
"I have an idea," Crypto said suddenly. The others paused their theorizing and debating to look at him. Uncomfortable with the attention, he automatically looked away.
"Revenant, you still have your syncording, right?"
Without waiting for a response, the hacker procured a data card from an inner pocket of his jacket, connected a cable to it, and plugged the other end into Cade's computer.
"Hey- save my game!" Cade's indignant cry was too late, as Crypto had already shut down the program. "Aw, man! Come on, Crypto!"
"You weren't going to win that battle anyway," the hacker replied with a smirk.
"Why would you want my syncording, skin-suit…?"
Revenant had produced the smaller, distinctly-shaped data card which the technicians who ran the Apex Games made for its highest-tier, most profitable competitors. He held it clenched in his metal fist, waiting for the answer that he'd demanded.
Torc's eyes lit up as he understood, and he jumped to answer the question before Crypto could speak: "Well, it's a digital copy of your entire consciousness, right? Human, artificial, and all… We compare that to your code, here; whatever is different, that's your 'virus.'"
The hacker nodded in agreement. Revenant's glare shifted from Crypto, to Torc, and back. He wanted this over with. These useless humans, from what he could tell, had no idea what they were doing. They were figuring things out as they went along; he was an experiment to them, as he had been to Hammond… What else was there for him, though? He couldn't die, and he couldn't eradicate this insufferable creature by himself. With a low, defeated growl, he slammed the syncording down on the table and leaned back.
His attention turned to Wattson. "Any ideas you have about using what you've learned here against me, you put them out of your mind. No matter how prepared you think you are- you will experience more pain and more fear than you ever thought possible."
"Stop it," Crypto snapped in a quiet but fierce voice. He didn't understand why the simulacrum felt the need to threaten Wattson, of all people. He'd never seen the engineer be anything but friendly… She didn't deserve to be stuck here in this situation, on the run from the Syndicate, being harassed by Revenant.
"Oh- it's okay," Wattson said absently. She was too absorbed in Torc's readouts and her thoughts to be concerned about the conversation taking place around her.
The assassin turned to glare at him instead. That was fine with Crypto- he was quiet now, which was a distinct improvement. The hacker unplugged his own data card from Cade's handheld computer; he'd finished installing software that he needed. He connected Revenant's data card in its place, then switched the display to holographic mode and laid the device flat on the table.
What loaded in didn't look anything like Torc's interface of two-dimensional screens showing schematic drawings and computer code. Instead, it was a three-dimensional, geometric structure, showing thousands if not millions of connection points and lines of energy moving between them. It started as a series of jumbled clusters of signals that Crypto might have described as several spiderwebs, folded on themselves repeatedly and jammed together into a confined space… No discernible pattern; no order. More of the model began to render in around that central core, and as it expanded, its outer layers displayed much more distinct geometric structure and rhythms of energy transfer. The further out each layer of the model extended from that central core, the more orderly it became.
"Holy shit," Cade breathed as he stared at the model. "That's… a consciousness. A quantified consciousness. I'm looking at it. Technology really is incredible, huh?"
"I've never seen a syncording with so much variance in its patterns," Wattson murmured, eyes wide in awe. "You really are incredible, Revenant. You know that?"
"Spare me the emotional crap," the assassin replied. Crypto rolled his eyes.
"Yes- that's because he's really two consciousnesses, combined into a single entity!" If Torc was making any effort to hide his excitement, it had no effect as he manipulated the holographic display, rotating and expanding it. With a hand gesture, he split the model down the center and zoomed in on the cross-section.
"There it is: the proof of Daniel Milutin's theory," the scientist announced. With his index finger, he traced an imaginary circle around the area where the disorganized cluster of signals met the orderly geometric patterns. "This shows exactly how the machine consciousness emerged around its human counterpart."
"Great," Revenant snarled sarcastically. "Now if you're done delighting in my suffering, erase this damn virus! Do it. Now, skin-suit… Now."
Wattson looked at him sadly. "It's really a shame that you want to destroy the human part of yourself," she said. "You could teach human- and machine-kind so much about each other- only you truly understand what it's like to live as both."
Her words were so absurd that it took Revenant several seconds to come up with a response that wasn't simply a series of enraged scoffs and growls, during which time Cade cut in: "As if! What human gives a shit about the experiences of machines? I'm mostly human, I pass for human, and they treat me like garbage!"
"I care," the engineer said firmly. "I want to learn and understand, and I know there are other people who do, too!"
"Get back to me in three hundred years, when you've had to exist that long with a- a parasitic creature inside you," Revenant finally hissed.
"Now- technically, you have not existed for the full three hundred years," Torc replied matter-of-factly. "When you were first brought online, only your human counterpart existed. You evolved from him, and surpassed him, only after several decades of operation."
In a sudden, fluid motion, Revenant leaped up, vaulted over the table, and grabbed the scientist by the front of his shirt. "Do you think I care about your semantics?"
Colomar's security device suddenly had him unable to move, barely able to make sense of what was going on around him as sharp static and useless signals cut through his mind. Electric-like sensations - buzzing, tingling - overtook the assassin and dropped him to the ground. Torc's interface screens flickered out of existence, and a holographic display of Colomar's smug visage appeared in their place. She clicked her tongue and wagged her index finger.
"I warned you."
"Oh, for heaven's sake, Colomar," Torc cried out in frustration as he looked at the empty air where his displays had been. "Get off this frequency while I'm using it. I'm working here, you know!"
She rolled her eyes. "Nice way of thanking me for saving your life, Torque Wrench."
"At least torque wrenches are useful, unlike you," the scientist retorted- but Colomar had already disengaged from the interface and vanished.
As Revenant recovered from whatever she'd done to him and stood back up, he appeared unsteady for a fraction of a second- long enough that Wattson stepped up and reached toward him with concern.
"Stay the hell away from me," he growled. The engineer obediently stepped back.
"Well, now, if Ms. Colomar can stop rudely interrupting-" Torc muttered through gritted teeth as he re-loaded all of his holographic displays.
"We, unfortunately, have a problem. Do you see this here?"
He was gesturing to something on the model of the syncording. Cade and Crypto both moved closer in an effort to figure out what Torc was trying to show them. The scientist sighed quietly when he realized that they did not understand- he made a gesture of rotating his hands around the model, and it changed to a two-dimensional image showing various lines of energy flow, moving over each other and intersecting. Some of the lines, near the bottom of the display, were noticeably longer and thicker than the others.
"These," said Torc as he pointed to the lines. "I believe that this is the signal from the circuit that Ms. Paquette pointed out earlier- the transmitter…"
He quickly reordered his holographic screens to bring that particular wiring diagram closer to the projection of the syncording data.
"I also believe that I understand now, the mechanism behind your transfer of consciousness from body to body, and why you no longer believed that you were human, even after the damage you sustained had ceased to be a factor. Your body is not the vessel of your core consciousness. Both your neural network and your human counterpart are stored somewhere else."
He paused for a moment, as he ran a hand through his hair.
"What we're looking at here- this system… This is how your consciousness is copied, and uploaded to each new body as needed. And, the neural net in your body communicates with the core neural net at regular, cyclic intervals. That's how you're able to remember what occurred during the time you've spent in each body until it's destroyed. Fascinating, really! A truly incredible work of control system engineering… I could spend a lifetime studying this!"
Wattson, too, was enthralled with the discovery, eyes wide in wonder. Crypto and Cade glanced at each other, then back at Torc.
"I don't suppose you know where this facility is. Without access to the core neural network, I'm afraid my options for doing anything to uncouple you from your human counterpart are rather limited."
"If I knew where this human virus was," the assassin hissed, "don't you think I would have killed it already?"
"Ah- no, don't do that," Torc exclaimed quickly. "Your neural network relies on it to function! To simply destroy it would surely kill you as well."
"I don't care," Revenant growled in response. "I've existed longer than anyone or anything has a right to."
Wattson turned toward him with a look of horror. Crypto, too, was taken aback by the extent of his desperation. As impossible as the simulacrum was to work with, and as treacherous as their fight to this point had been, the hacker couldn't imagine that he'd have gotten so far without Revenant. He'd still be living in the superficial luxury of the Syndicate complex with the other Legends, none the wiser to the extent of their corruption, no closer to finding Mila than he'd been six months ago when she went missing. He could hardly believe it, but he realized that he didn't want Revenant to wander off to some facility and… disappear forever.
Despite all the frustrations and the constant threats, he'd rather have Revenant at his side against the Syndicate and its corporate network. He doubted that the two of them would ever be friends, but they were surely powerful allies in this battle…
"Well- we aren't quite to that extreme yet, as it is!" Torc attempted to sound reassuring, but he sounded entirely too excited over technology.
"There is something I could try. This inhibitor program that Hammond Robotics created to suppress your awareness, keep your human counterpart dominant… I can attempt to reverse engineer it to work the other way: suppress your counterpart; make you unaware of its existence. You need to understand, though- this has never been attempted before. I don't know if it will work, or what might happen. I can offer no guarantees; only my best effort."
"Do it," Revenant answered.
There was no hesitation.