Ark-13: An Odyssey by B.B. Gallagher Read Free Book Online

drive out of his armport and placed it in his open palm.
    “You are not the first, Jake…” Danny smiled. “I couldn’t tell you until you were overwritten,” he said nodding to the drive in his hand.
    “How many of us are their?” Jake asked.
    “You are the seventh… To be honest, we needed you, Jake. We have no leadership. Just crazy rebels willing to risk everything for our rights.” For the first time Danny broke from his confident swagger. His voice carried an emotional cadence behind it. A slight quiver resonated behind his words. “We have no strategy, we have no direction. We need someone… like you…”
    Jake remembered Meredith’s note, Trust Danny Ryder . And he saw why. Jake could see in his eyes a hope for a leader.
    He nodded to his new friend, eyes still locked on his.
    “I’m all in…” Jake affirmed but Danny leaned forward and appraised his admission. He arched his eyebrows in an effort to emphasize his assurance. Danny nodded, accepting the commitment, and leaned back in his chair.
    “Who are the other five?” Jake continued his line of questioning.
    “Coop Nolan, Nurse Lucy from Sick Bay, Elijah Johnson, Zoe Maddon and Junior Posey.” Jake’s ears perked up at mention of the last name.
    “The last time I saw you with Junior Posey, he was about to beat the snot out of you,” Jake exclaimed. Danny smiled, devilishly. “Was that for show?”
    “He wanted proof that overwritten vitals would work… so I had to show him,” Danny shrugged. Jake shook his head again in disbelief. He had to hand it to Danny, he was three steps ahead of him.
    “I know Coop and Lucy but who are Elijah and Zoe.”
    “They are my age. Elijah is popular with most of the rough and toughs. Quarterback-of-the-football-team type of guy. Zoe is more of the artistic type. Kind of emo but I love her anyway…” Jake nodded his head and changed the subject.
    “Was Meredith a member?”
    “No… she wasn’t overwritten.” Danny shook his head.
    “What did you talk to her about before they issued the detainment order?”
    “Meredith followed me here, much like you have, and asked how I had hacked my armport. She caught on to me somehow from our little episode in the Stalls. She expressed some interest in being overwritten herself but first wanted to know what else I had hacked. So I showed her the Q drive, which not only contains all the surveillance feeds from around the Ark and all of the e-messages transferred across the network but also contains every colonist’s vital prints.”
    “Woah, woah, woah… you mean to tell me you have access to all of that?” Jake asked, astonished with an open hand, slowing him down.
    “Yeah man…” Danny responded as if it wasn’t a big deal. Jake turned his hand as if to release the brakes on the conversation.
    “But the problem is that most of the data is useless at this point. Each colonist has been assigned a random identification number. They are only referred to on the Q drive by that number in the data tables and we don’t have the corresponding names. So I can see a message being transferred but I don’t know who it is from or who it is to. I can see that a guy is crushing and a girl is blushing but I don’t know which colonists. If I did, I could be quite the matchmaker.” Danny leaned back, pleased with his wit. He let the information settle and tried to read Jake’s expression.
    “Are ya with me?”
    “Yeah, I got it…” Jake affirmed, waving for him to continue.
    “So in a nutshell we have all of this data but we don’t know how to read it, so we can’t use it. The colonist master file serves as the map between names and IDs. It is critical to being able to use this data on the Q drive. I told her that I couldn’t hack it without GENESIS knowing and that it would have to be copied manually, which sucks because the file is on the…”
    “X drive…” Jake finished his sentence, recalling Meredith’s note.
    “But as you know the X drive