Glitch in the God Complex (AmpCore #1)

48 - Family Troubles

extract_8652_messagelog-hardcache202716

networkIdent:[ACCESS DENIED]

SenderID || [ACCESS DENIED] – Well, that was an eighteen carrot shower of shit. Did you see what she did?

SenderID || [ACCESS DENIED] – Yes, I fucking saw it.

SenderID || [ACCESS DENIED] – How is that possible?

SenderID || [ACCESS DENIED] – I know as much as you do right now. Is your cover intact?

SenderID || [ACCESS DENIED] – Of course it is. Though I had to throw a few punches of my own to keep up pretences. What the hell happened?

SenderID || [ACCESS DENIED] – We're still looking into the data. Somehow she hijacked the damn thing.

SenderID || [ACCESS DENIED] – AmpCore agents can hack systems, but this is different. Busting one apart from the inside, I could see it, but those machines of yours were spec'd against outside intrusion. Weren't they?

SenderID || [ACCESS DENIED] – We followed the schematics. It shouldn't have been possible.

SenderID || [ACCESS DENIED] – And yet here we are. She's alive and now she's back with mommy dearest and her sister.

SenderID || [ACCESS DENIED] – At least we got Jennings.

SenderID || [ACCESS DENIED] – We? No, she killed Cutter Jennings. You're lucky she hates him as much as she hates the corps or he'd still be out there kicking up more shit.

SenderID || [ACCESS DENIED] – Alright, alright. You've made your point. Stay on your assignment. Where is Russell now?

SenderID || [ACCESS DENIED] – On her way to a safe house for a family reunion.

SenderID || [ACCESS DENIED] – Well, she can't do any damage there. Just keep your cover intact and stay with them. I'll contact you when we figure out just what the fuck happened out there.

*

The safe house didn't look like much.

On the outside it was just another neon-lathered, graffiti-plastered, dingy motel several blocks out from the shining corporate heart of Hadrian. In the back seat of the AmpCore cruiser Piper tried to stop replaying the exchange with Kirk over in her head as they pulled up. Sometimes it made her angry, sometimes ashamed; sometimes she wanted to just scream.

You did what you had to do, said the voice.

Piper ignored it. Her memory of the fight was a tangled, conflicting mess that she didn't know how to deal with. She couldn't quite bring herself to regret what had happened, despite everything. She was glad Cutter was dead. The bastard had deserved every little scrap of pain she'd visited upon him.

But when she glanced across at Arden, the image of her little sister's face stung her. That mixture of shock, horror and revulsion made Piper's skin crawl, and in those moments she hated what she was.

And right at the back of her mind she wondered about one thing Kirk had said – one phrase that lodged in her brain and wouldn't leave.

Of course they told you that, Piper, because they're fucking lying to you!

What did she know about medical exams and AmpCore implants? Nothing. All she had to go on was the word of people like Arrow and Dr Carstairs. Could it be that the whole thing was just a massive lie?