Crux

48 ACCESS DENIED

Saturday October 27th

Holtzmann closed his eyes again.

Alive. I’m still alive.

He had to get Rangan Shankari free. He felt it in his bones. The strong desire. The deep need to break Shankari loose from ERD custody.

Lane had done this to him, had bent him this way, had turned him into a tool. The boy’s mind had been monstrous, terrifying. The memory of it sent shivers through him. And the President, the assassination… Panic was rising again, clawing at him, threatening to break loose.

He needed something. Relief from this horror. Holtzmann pulled up the neurotransmitter controls, dialed up a dose of his own opiates, just a little one, just enough so he could think. He pressed the mental button, waited for the sweet relief.

Nothing.

What?

He pressed the button again. Nothing happened.

He closed the controls, killed the process, relaunched it, dialed up an opiate dose again.

Nothing.

The panic was rising higher now. Higher every instant.

Lane. Lane must have done this.

He pulled up a diagnostic suite within Nexus OS, ran it to scan the system. Half the diagnostics failed, instantly. Error messages came back. ACCESS DENIED. ACCESS DENIED. ADMINISTRATOR PRIVILEGES REQUIRED. ACCESS DENIED. INSUFFICIENT PERMISSIONS. ACCESS DENIED.

Oh no. Oh God no.

Lane had taken away Holtzmann’s root access to his own Nexus OS. He’d taken away control of the software running on Holtzmann’s own brain.

He forced himself to think, forced himself to concentrate. There must be some way around this.

He reached out to his home network again. Success. He could still access the net. From there he linked to an anonymization service, and from there out to a Nexus code repository. There, a new version of Nexus OS, more recent than his own. He clicked the link to install it, to override his current Nexus OS.

ACCESS DENIED.

Damn it!

He could uninstall Nexus, remove it from his brain. Then find another dose, somehow, reinstall his apps… He launched the command to evict the Nexus nodes from inside his skull

[Nexus purge]

The system threw up a prompt:

[This command will erase Nexus OS and purge all Nexus nodes from your brain. All stored data and applications will be lost. Are you sure you want to continue? Y/N]

[Yes], he thought at it eagerly.

[ACCESS DENIED.]

Holtzmann nearly screamed in frustration. He tried a dozen more things, installing patches, changing permissions on files, editing raw bits that controlled access to resources, writing his own crude code to control his neurotransmitter levels.

[ACCESS DENIED.] [ACCESS DENIED.] [ACCESS DENIED.]

He was sweating now. He could see Rangan Shankari’s face. He could see the boy in captivity. His stomach was clenching. It was intolerable. He had to get the boy out of ERD custody. But he had another problem. A problem that would get in the way.

How long had it been? How long since his last opiate dose? Twelve hours? Something like that?

He was due. He was due to take more. He felt the need for it. Even if this added stress wasn’t here, he’d need another dose soon. And without another dose…

Martin Holtzmann was going to go into withdrawal.