Lock In

by John Scalzi

  I glanced over to Dad but he was engaged in a side discussion with Carole Lamb and my mother. He was going to be no help here.

  “You’re missing the point,” Buchold said. “What we’re trying to offer is options. The ability to break free of the physical constraints Hadens live with daily.”

  “Do I look constrained to you?” Hubbard said. “Does Chris?”

  “I’m right here, guys,” I said.

  “Then tell me, do you feel constrained?” Hubbard asked me.

  “Not really,” I admitted. “But then, as you said, I don’t have much basis for comparison.”

  “I do,” Hubbard said. “I was twenty-five when I was locked in. The things I’ve done since then are things any person could do. That any person would want to do.”

  “You just have to borrow someone else’s body to do them,” Buchold said.

  Hubbard smiled, showing his teeth. “I don’t borrow someone else’s body to pretend I don’t have Haden’s, Jim,” he said. “I borrow someone else’s body because otherwise there’s a certain percentage of people who forget I’m a person.”

  “All the more reason for a cure,” Buchold said.

  “No,” Hubbard said. “Making people change because you can’t deal with who they are isn’t how it’s supposed to be done. What needs to be done is for people to pull their heads out of their asses. You say ‘cure.’ I hear ‘you’re not human enough.’”

  “Oh, come on,” Buchold said. “Don’t get on that horse with me, Hubbard. No one’s saying that and you know it.”

  “Do I?” Hubbard said. “Here’s something to think about, Jim. Right now, neural networks and threeps and all the innovations that came out of the Haden Research Initiative Act have been kept to the benefit of Hadens. So far the FDA has only approved them for Hadens. But paraplegics and quadriplegics can benefit from threeps. So can other Americans with mobility issues. So can older Americans whose bodies are failing them in one way or another.”

  “The FDA has kept threeps to Haden’s victims because jamming a second brain into your head is inherently dangerous,” Buchold said. “You do it if you have no other choice.”

  “But everyone else should still have that choice,” Hubbard said. “And now, finally, they’re going to get access to these technologies. Among every other thing it does, Abrams-Kettering sets a pathway to getting these technologies out to more people. More Americans will be using these technologies in the future. Millions more. When they do, Jim, are you going to dismiss and belittle them, too?”

  “I don’t think you’re hearing what I’m saying,” Buchold said.

  “I’m hearing it just fine,” Hubbard said. “I want you to hear that what I hear sounds like bigotry.”

  “Jesus,” Buchold said. “Now you sound like that goddamn Cassandra Bell woman.”

  “Oh, man,” I said.

  “What?” Buchold said, turning to me.

  “Uh,” I said.

  “Chris doesn’t want to tell you that my Integrator for the evening is Nicholas Bell, Cassandra Bell’s older brother,” Hubbard said. “I on the other hand don’t have a problem letting you know that.”

  Buchold stared at Hubbard silently for a moment. Then: “You have got to be fucking—”

  “Jim,” Wisson said, interrupting.

  “Everything all right?” Dad asked. His attention had finally returned to our end of the table.

  “Everything’s fine, Dad,” I said. “But I think Jim has a couple of questions that might be best asked to you directly. If Carole doesn’t mind swapping seats with him for a bit that would be lovely.”

  “Of course not,” Lamb said.

  “Excellent,” I said, and looked over to Buchold, hoping he would take the hint, or at least be grateful to me for some face time with Dad. He nodded curtly, stood up, and swapped seats.

  Hubbard leaned in. “Nice save,” he said, very quietly.

  I nodded, and then rubbed my jaw. The pain was coming back. I was pretty sure it wasn’t because of my molar.

  My internal phone went up. I answered it with my inside voice. “Yeah,” I said.

  “Shane,” Vann said. “How far are you from Leesburg right now?”

  “About ten miles,” I said. “Why?”

  “You’ve heard of Loudoun Pharma?”

  “In fact I’m having dinner with its CEO and his husband,” I said. “Why?”

  “It just blew up,” Vann said.

  “What?” I looked over at Buchold, who was speaking close in and animatedly at my dad.

  “It just blew up,” Vann repeated. “And it looks like a Haden was involved.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “I wish I was, because then I’d be getting laid instead of heading your direction,” Vann said. “Get out there now. Start mapping the place and getting data. I’ll be there in about forty minutes.”

  “What do I tell Jim Buchold?” I asked.

  “He the CEO?”

  “Yeah,” I said. Then I noticed Buchold reaching into his suit pocket for his phone. “Hold on, I think he may be finding out.”

  Buchold leaped up and ran out of the room, phone still up to his ear. Rick Wisson watched him leave, confused.

  “Yup,” I said. “He knows.”

  Chapter Eight

  THE LOUDOUN PHARMA campus consisted of two main buildings. One held the offices for the C-suite, middle management and support staff, local reps and the company’s lobbyists for D.C. and Richmond. The other contained the labs, which housed the scientists, the IT people, and their respective support staffs.

  The office building was a wreck. Every window on the east side of the structure was shattered and had fallen out of the walls. Most of the rest of the windows were in various stages of damage. Paperwork wafted out of holes, fluttering in the air before coming to rest in the shady boulevard that separated the two buildings from each other.

  The labs were mostly gone.

  Fire engines from every corner of Loudoun County surrounded the rubble, and firemen looked for something to put out. There was very little to put out. The explosion had collapsed the building on itself, smothering any incipient fire before it could catch. EMTs circled the collapsed building, using scanners to locate RFID-equipped personnel badges the Loudoun Pharma staff used.

  There were six badges pinging, all for janitorial staff. The EMT deployed roach and snake bots to scurry through the wreckage toward the badges to see if they were still attached to anyone alive.

  They were not.

  “Here’s what the security guards saw,” I said, to Vann. We were in her car and I was porting the images to her dash. She was sucking like a demon on one of her cigarettes. It might have been a side effect of sexual frustration, but now was not the moment to ask. I kept the door on my side open to vent the smoke.

  In the dash, we were treated to a guard-post camera view of an SUV accelerating into the parking lot and then ramming through the gate, snapping it off as it drove through.

  “Back it up and pause it just before the snap,” Vann said. I did. She pointed. “License plate and face,” she said.

  “Right,” I said. “Neither of which match the RFID badge that pinged when the SUV rammed through, though.”

  “Who does the badge belong to?”

  “Karl Baer,” I said. “He’s a geneticist. Works in the lab. He’s also a Haden, which is why we were pinged.”

  “That’s not a threep driving the SUV,” Vann said. “So whoever this is stole Baer’s ID. But why would they do that and then just ram the goddamn gate?”

  “They needed the ID to access the parking garage under the labs,” I said. “Staff parking is in the garages. Visitor parking outside.”

  “And an SUV full of explosives is much more effective under the building than next to it.”

  “I imagine that’s the thinking, yes.”

  “So if it’s a stolen ID, do we need to be here?” Vann asked. “Still?”

  I paused for a second, wonderin
g why she would ask me that, then remembered it was still my first day with her, unbelievable as it was at this point. She was still testing me.

  “Yeah, we do,” I said. “One, we need to check in on Baer to make sure the ID was stolen. Two”—I pointed back to the image of the SUV about to ram the gate—“there’s the fact that this SUV is registered to Jay Kearney.”

  “Am I supposed to know who Jay Kearney is?”

  “You might,” I said. “He’s an Integrator. Or was.”

  Vann took a final suck on her cigarette and put it out on her window glass. “Show me a clean picture of Kearney,” she said.

  I loaded his Integrator license picture into the dash and placed it next to the image of the person driving the car. Vann leaned in and peered.

  “What do you think?” I asked.

  “Could be. Could be,” she said. She glanced up over the dash toward the collapsed building and the flashing lights of the cops, firemen, and EMTs. “Have they found him yet?”

  “I don’t think they’re looking for him,” I said. “They’re looking for the janitors. And anyway if he was in the SUV when it went up then he’s a fine coat of ash all over that parking garage.”

  “You share this with anyone yet?”

  “No one here is interested in talking to me,” I said. “I’m Haden affairs, not terrorism.” As I said this the distant sound of a helicopter became loud and got louder.

  “That’s probably terrorism right now,” Vann said. “They like to make an entrance.”

  I motioned back at the image. “I got this from security the same time the Leesburg cops and the Loudoun sheriffs did but I don’t think they’ve looked at it yet.”

  “All right,” Vann said. She wiped the images off her screen. “Where are you parked?”

  “I’m not,” I said. “I caught a ride with Jim Buchold, the CEO. He’s over yelling at the Leesburg cops.”

  “Good,” Vann said. She started her car.

  “Where are we going?” I closed the door on my side.

  “We’re going to visit Karl Baer,” Vann said. “Pull up his address, please.”

  “Do we need a warrant?” I asked, as I did it.

  “I want to talk to him, not arrest him,” Vann said. “But you might see if you can get a warrant for Kearney’s records. I want to know who he was integrating with. See if you can pull Nicholas Bell’s records too. Two Integrators possibly tied up with murder in a single day is a little much for me.”

  * * *

  Karl Baer’s apartment was in a little gray apartment complex in Leesburg, next to a supermarket and an International House of Pancakes. He was in a bottom corner apartment, tucked underneath a stairwell. There was no response when we knocked.

  “He is a Haden,” I pointed out.

  “If he’s living here he’s got a threep,” Vann said. “If he’s got a damn employee badge at Loudoun Pharma then he’s got a threep. He can answer the door.” She knocked again.

  “I’ll go around back and see if I can see in a window,” I said, after a minute.

  “Yeah, okay,” Vann said. “No, wait.” She tried the doorknob. It turned all the way.

  “You really going to do this?” I asked, looking at the doorknob.

  “The door was open,” Vann said.

  “The door was closed,” I said. “Just unlocked.”

  “Are you recording?”

  “Right now? No.”

  Vann pushed the door open. “Look, it’s open,” she said.

  “You’re just a beacon of safe constitutional practices, Vann,” I said, echoing her from earlier in the day.

  She grinned. “Come on,” she said.

  We found Karl Baer in his bedroom, a knife shoved into his brain. A threep was standing beside his cradle, knife handle in hand, flush with Baer’s temple.

  “Holy shit,” I said.

  “Go open the window blinds,” Vann said. I did what she told me. “If anyone asks, you came around the back, looked in and saw this, and that’s when we entered the apartment.”

  “I don’t have a good feeling about this,” I said.

  “What’s to feel good about?” Vann asked. “Are you recording yet?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Start,” she said.

  “I’m on.”

  Vann went over to the light switch and flipped it on with her elbow. “Start mapping,” she said. She put on a pair of gloves as I did so. After I was done mapping, she went over and picked up a tablet on the side table next to Baer’s cradle and turned on the screen.

  “Shane,” she said. She turned the tablet around so I could see the screen. Jay Kearney was on it.

  “Is it a video?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Vann said, turning the screen back to her. I walked over to her and she pressed “play.”

  On the screen Jay Kearney came to life. He was holding the tablet so that he and Karl Baer were both caught by the camera.

  “This is Karl Baer,” Kearney said. “I am speaking for myself and for my good friend Jay Kearney, with whom I am now integrated. For the past eight years I have worked at Loudoun Pharma as a geneticist, as part of a team working to reverse the effects of Haden’s syndrome.

  “When I joined Loudoun, I believed that what I was doing was right for Haden’s. None of us asked to be trapped within our bodies. I know I didn’t. I was a teenager when I got sick and all the things I loved to do were taken from me. Working to reverse the changes that Haden’s had brought into my life made sense to me. I looked forward to the chance to have that new life.

  “But as I went on I began to realize that Haden’s wasn’t some life sentence. It was just another way to live. I began to see the beauty of the world we Hadens were creating, the millions of us, in our own spaces and in our own way. And I began listening to the words of Cassandra Bell, who said that people like me, people who were working to quote-unquote cure Haden’s, were in fact killing the first new nation of humanity to come along in centuries.

  “She’s right. We are. I am. And it’s time to put a stop to it now.

  “It’s not something I could have done by myself. Fortunately my friend Jay believes as I do and believes it enough to help me. Others, who will remain nameless, helped along the way to provide us with materials and planning. And now all that needs to be done is to set it all into motion. Jay and I will do it together. And when his part is over, then I will come back here in order to join him on the next part of our journey together. I guess if you’re seeing this you know how I did this.

  “For my family and friends, I know that my actions—our actions—may not seem comprehensible. I know that there’s a chance that a few innocent people will be harmed or even killed. I regret this and apologize to those who will lose loved ones tonight. But I ask them to understand that if I don’t take these actions now, then what Loudoun Pharma is doing will lead to the extinction of an entire people. A genocide committed through quote-unquote kindness.

  “To my colleagues at Loudoun Pharma, I know many of you will be angry with me, now that my actions have set back your work and research by years. But what I ask of you now is to spend that time you have to think about the consequences of what you are doing. Read and listen to the words of Cassandra Bell as I have. I believe in what she has to say. I believe in her. I follow her philosophy in the things I do today. I believe that you might do the same in time.

  “Good-bye and all the best to Hadens everywhere. I am with you, always.”

  * * *

  “None of this makes any goddamned sense,” Jim Buchold said.

  We were in the family room of Buchold and Wisson’s home outside Leesburg. The Leesburg police, Loudoun County sheriffs, and FBI apparently had to just about forcibly remove Buchold from the Loudoun Pharma campus in order to get him out of the way so they could do their work. As a result Buchold was pacing around his family room, feeling useless. Wisson had fixed his husband a drink to calm him down. It sat undrunk on the table. Eventually Wisson helped himse
lf to it.

  “Why doesn’t it make any goddamned sense?” Vann asked.

  “Because Karl was a principal investigator for Neuroulease.”

  “Which is,” Vann prompted.

  “It’s the drug we were developing to stimulate the voluntary nervous system in Haden’s victims,” Buchold said. In spite of myself I felt vaguely annoyed at the use of the word “victim” in that sentence. “Haden’s suppresses the ability of the brain to speak to the voluntary nervous system. Neuroulease encourages the brain to develop new pathways to the system. We’ve done tests on chips that worked and have been working on genetically modified mice. Progress was slow but encouraging.”

  “Is ‘neuroulease’ the actual chemical?” I asked.

  “It’s the brand name we’re planning to use for it,” Buchold said. “The actual name of the chemical compound is about a hundred and twenty letters long. The most recent iteration of the compound—the one Karl was working on—was called LPNX-211 for internal recordkeeping.”

  “And Dr. Baer never showed any indication of developing a moral opposition to what he was researching,” Vann asked.

  “Of course not,” Buchold said. “I didn’t spend that much time with him, but as far as I know the only things that Karl actually cared about were his work and Notre Dame football. He went there for undergrad. When he had a presentation he always managed to put in a slide with the team in it. I tolerated it because his work was that good.”

  “What about his relationship with Jay Kearney?” I asked.

  “Who?”

  “The Integrator whose body we think Baer used to drive the vehicle into the parking garage,” Vann said.

  “Never heard of him,” Buchold said. “Karl always used his threep at work.”

  “Did you see Kearney integrating with Baer outside of work?” I asked.

  Buchold glanced over at his husband. “We didn’t exactly run in the same social circles,” Wisson said. “I don’t encourage Jim to be overly friendly with his staff. It’s better if they see him as a boss rather than a friend.”

  “So that would be a no,” Vann said.

  “It’s not because he’s a Haden—was a Haden,” Buchold said. He turned to me. “I treat all my employees equally. We have a compliance officer in HR to make sure of it.”