Authorize Command and Control Link to Collar?
Alexander clenched his jaw, closed his eyes, and tried one last time to wake up in a less crazy reality. Nothing changed when he opened them.
CTE. Containment? Termination? Enforcement?
It could be a bomb collar. He’d considered it from the moment he found the damn thing around his neck, likening it to some of his favorite movies. But if superpowers really existed, maybe the collar suppressed those instead.
Maybe it does both.
He hesitated to answer. Was it voice activated? Did he need to subvocalize? What if establishing a connection was enough to set off the bomb collar? If it were a bomb collar.
It’s totally a bomb collar. I’m calling it right now.
“Authorized,” he rasped, wincing at the potential explosion.
Authorized Received
Connection Established
Collar Slaved to Host Implant
Operations:
DiagnosticsInterfaceDeactivateAlexander swallowed, considering each line carefully. He stifled the urge to select option three.
It’s possible that deactivating it will raise an alarm somewhere.
“Diagnostics.”
Status Report: Santiago Systems X-3 CTE Collar
Mode: Active Containment
Containment Field: Enabled
Power Suppression: Maximum
Locator Beacon: Online
Biometric Telemetry: Streaming
Failsafe: Armed
Remote Override: Enabled
Recommendation: Disable Failsafe and Remote Override
It’s giving me advice now? Some sort of onboard intelligence?
Alexander exhaled, not realizing he’d been holding his breath. The device was everything he’d feared. ‘Failsafe’ obviously meant ‘necktie explosive’.
And leaving anyone with a remote trigger? No thanks.
That meant he needed to shut down the remote override first, just in case anything else tripped an alarm. Then he could disable the failsafe, and finally the suppression. Assuming everything went to plan, he could leave the tracking and data feeds to make it look like things were operating normally.
And if they do detect something is wrong, someone’s going to have to come down and fix it. That’d be an opportunity too.
“Interface,” Alexander commanded with a whisper. “Then disable the remote override, the failsafe, and the suppression. In that order.”
Warning: Disabling power suppression will trigger an automatic alert.
Authorize Alert Suppression?
It hadn’t escaped his notice that the implant was growing more coherent over time.
“Yes, do it. And keep everything else reporting normally.”
For a few heartbeats, Alexander wondered if he’d just made a fatal mistake.
Remote Override: Disabled
Failsafe: Disabled
Power Suppression: Disabled
188 Alerts Suppressed
Alexander barely had time to process the final line of the implant’s report before the sensation struck.
He was being watched. The certainty that washed over him was like nothing he’d ever felt before. It was the type of knowledge people just had. Like knowing the sun would rise. Or that he had to inhale and exhale to survive another minute.
His eyes lifted instinctively to the ceiling fixture. It was a squat, reinforced light encased in mesh. He’d looked at it a hundred times before without thinking, but this time he felt it.
I’m not paranoid. And I’m definitely not crazy.
He snorted.
Okay, so I might be a little crazy. I am talking to myself, after all.
Alexander forced himself to breathe and slowly looked away from the device. He might have already given himself away, but it couldn’t hurt to pretend. Closing his eyes, he willed himself to relax and waited to see if the sensations would fade.
It did not. If anything, the absence of his eyesight sharpened his new awareness. It was almost as if he could reach out and touch the device, tracing its form behind the armored mesh. Above it, and running up into the ceiling, he felt a pulse… almost like a heartbeat, occurring in intervals too precise to be random.
He kept his eyes closed and stood, carefully stepping from one side of the cell to the other. As he did, he felt the device tracking his motion. It wasn’t the device moving physically, but something inside of it. Deeper. Like an algorithm adjusting its focus as he moved about.
It’s a camera… and I can feel it watching me, sense the data packets it’s sending out, and maybe the current feeding into it.
Alexander took another breath, this one almost ragged. No matter how much he’d hoped this was a temporary delusion, that perhaps he was having some coma dream and would wake up in a hospital any moment, he couldn’t deny the truth any longer.
With the power suppression disabled, some part of his mind that had been shackled burst to life. And with it came a sense of familiarity.
And a name.
Technopathy.