Inheritance
by elfin

Part Five


<_You have a better idea?

<_How do you intend to keep her from attacking, from injuring you? 

<_Same as before, we just build the cage before we start rather than during the fight

Kitt could feel the words, 'Are you sure?' on the peripheral of his link with Karr, but they weren't given voice in any way, shape or form. 

<_And then we question her?

<_We need to know where she is and who she was linked to 

<_We need to know why she is attacking you and stop her.  There may only be one way of doing that

<_We're not cutting her off from her CPU 

<_She's insane, Kitt.  That is no way to exist.  If your link with Michael was severed would you want to be here?

<_That's different.  She hasn't ended her own existence.  We have no right 

<_We have every right if her existence constantly threatens yours

<_We need to know why! 

<_There may no longer be a 'why'

There was no argument to that.  Kitt knew Karr was right, he just wasn't sure he could go through with it. 

<_ I can't kill

<_Even now, even though she threatens your life? 

<_It's not who I was created to be

<_You were not created to be an android, Kitt.  You were not created to be Michael Knight's… life partner but that what you've become 

<_I won't become a killer.  Garth - Goliath was a killer

<_Goliath was a tool controlled by Garth.  Even when your CPU was implanted into that truck, it was still a tool 

As Karr spoke, a logical conclusion, a certainty, was built inside Kitt's computer brain, something so obvious he would later run a check on all his systems to ensure everything was running as it should have been, that the attacks hadn't corrupted important files.

<_That's absolutely what Goliath was, isn't it?  Karr… I know who was on the other end of the link, I know why the AI's trying to kill me 

 

 

"Why didn't she tell you she was Garth's lover?"

Perched on the edge of the sofa, Nick shrugged.  "I don't know.  Maybe she knew who I was." 

"Garth never met you."

"Quinn Campbell did.  Have you had any word from Devon about her?" 

Michael shook his head, pausing in his pacing to gaze at his partner through the windshield of the Stealth.  That spark, that notion he'd had when Nick had been talking about Clay, and her work with the AI… being moved to a different project a month before….

He took a single step forward, the spark finally igniting.  "Oh God…." 

"What is it?"

"Nick… I know who was on the other end of the AI's link."  Turning, he glanced across at where his partner was sitting on Karr's hood and felt the sudden sadness.  Had they both worked it out at the same time, or had the answer simply bled through the link? 

~

"He planned this." 

Michael ached for his lover, standing at the metal railing staring out with unseeing eyes over the grey water.

"We'll never know what actually happened, Kitt…." 

"We can take a guess, though, can't we?"

Yeah, they could take a guess.  That Garth somehow found out about the neuro implants.  That he had Clay arrange the purchase of an AI, had it trained and developed.  While at the same time having an implant inserted into his own head, linked to a chip in the AI's CPU.  And he'd been training it too, weaning a dependency on the link, making sure that when Kitt was transplanted into Goliath's CPU, when he was hit front-on by his own creation, the pain, the death, was hurled over at the AI he was linked to.  An AI that had a front row seat, and when the horror was over was left staring madness in the face. 

"If I hadn't destroyed the lab that morning, she'd have come after me immediately.  Garth, presumably had already given her all the information she needed, data grabbed when he lifted my CPU from the car.  But her CPU was moved to the Bishop facility along with everything else.  No external comms ports.  She didn't have any way of getting out."

"The only question left is who broke into Bishop, stole the CPU, and gave her a way to finally get her revenge."  But he knew it was a question for later; it wasn't concerning Kitt at that moment.  

"If someone hurt you - killed you - I'd be after revenge too, be they human or AI."

"We have a different relationship."  He wasn't certain if he liked the thought or not, but this wasn't the time. 

"You think Karr wouldn't do the same if it was Nick?"

Of course he would.  He changed the subject.  "Where is she, the AI?" 

"Trapped on a hard disk at Nick's back up facility.  When we caught her in the cage she was… hysterical.  There isn't any sense, any logic, anymore.  What happened drove her insane.  Karr wrote in a sleep command, she should just be looping, with no real knowledge of 'self' I suppose is the best way of putting up.  There are no external links, no way for her to escape."

"And… now what?  We leave her like that?"

"For now."  Whatever Kitt and Karr had planned, Michael wasn't sure he wanted to know right then.  "Can we go home?" 

"Sure.  I should call Devon.  I was on the phone to him when all this started, I dropped the call mid-sentence, can't even remember what we were talking about."

Kitt nodded.  "Call him later.  Tomorrow." 

A smile slide across his face and in his mind Michael felt a jolt of electricity.  "Your wish is my command."

"I like it that way round."  

Michael laughed.  "Yeah, you would."

 

 

fin




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