by Dima Zales
I see the bluish, cherry-scented Wi-Fi network of our restaurant. Muhomor’s Brainocytes and phone, Mr. Spock’s Brainocytes, Ada’s Brainocytes and phone, and Gogi’s phone are all connected to this cherry-scented Wi-Fi, which makes sense. I also experience colors, tastes, and smells from the Wi-Fi networks of the other businesses on the street, but I still have no clue as to the nature of my concern.
Figuring Wi-Fi is useless, I switch the app to focus on cell phone traffic instead of Wi-Fi. Luckily, the app can detect a wide range of signals, including AM/FM radio, TV signals, Bluetooth, and a slew of other options that would only interest Muhomor.
Cell phone coverage is an almost imperceptible shimmer, like the heat haze you see on a hot day above a desert road. It takes concentration to tell Verizon apart from say, AT&T, but around each cell phone, I can make out the colors that indicate its cell phone provider, and akin to Wi-Fi, I can smell and taste these connections, giving me an idea of whether I can hack them.
I close my eyes and focus on the cell phone colors around me. Predictably, there’s a bunch around the table and a couple inside some of the businesses. All those are as I expected.
What I didn’t expect, though, are the shimmers behind a couple of the parked cars down the street.
At first, I tell myself people might’ve forgotten their cell phones inside their cars. But when I open my eyes, I verify with ever-increasing dread that the shimmer is coming from outside the cars, not inside. Then I see one of the shimmers move and catch a glimpse of sunlight reflecting off one of the lurker’s sunglasses.
Trying my best not to panic, I frantically switch back to Wi-Fi mode and seek a camera to look through. I hit jackpot when I get on the pawnshop’s mint-scented Wi-Fi, located just to the left of the spot where I spotted the reflection. The security camera is basic, but I still make out the one chilling detail I was missing.
The man wearing those shades is holding a gun with an elongated barrel ending with a silencer.
What’s worse is that I see more people with guns. This isn’t that big of a surprise, since each man is attached to the cell phones I detected earlier.
My racing heartbeat reminds me of the sounds the engine in Mitya’s Bugatti Veyron made the day we drove through the Nevada desert at 250 miles per hour.
I wasn’t being paranoid before—and now that I know I’m not crazy, I almost wish I were.
Chapter Eight
As before, when I was in those gray-hair-inducing situations in Russia, the stress combines with the brain boost to drastically slow down time. The sunglasses-clad man in the camera seems to move as though through molasses as he signals his conspirators.
I leap into mental action. In panicky Zik, I inform my friends about my discovery and then deal with their reactions, which start off as incredulity but quickly turn to terror. At the same time, I craft a text to Gogi. “We’re being ambushed. Here’s a link to a camera feed. Don’t show any alarm yet. We want them to think they still have the element of surprise.”
“Who are they?” Mitya demands.
“What do they want?” Ada grabs my elbow, her small hand like an icicle. “Do we have time to call the police?”
“Mitya, get in touch with the cops first and Joe second, in that order,” I mentally send instead of answering their questions. “Muhomor, I can’t hack their phones, but I suspect you might succeed where I’ve failed.”
As my friends start on their tasks, I notice Gogi hasn’t checked his phone yet, and a whole microsecond has already passed.
I kick Gogi’s foot under the table, and when I catch his gaze, I pointedly look at his phone. Since it isn’t clear whether Gogi understood my intent, I use EmoRat to give instructions to Mr. Spock. The rat scurries down the table to get within Gogi’s eyesight, freezes, and then glares at the phone. He lifts his paw and points his nose at the phone—a rat’s version of a posture I usually associate with hunting dogs.
“I’m in their phones,” Muhomor says. “Sending you all the information on their identities.”
Continuing to multitask, I read our assailants’ profiles while trying to devise a plan.
The men ambushing us are former military personnel, with a dash of penal system alumni, and they’re all extremely dangerous. They have something else in common as well—they work for a security agency that sounds eerily like Joe’s. A man called Vincent Williams spearheads the agency, and his resume makes my cousin look like a boy scout.
Viewing images of Vincent Williams, I shudder. He reminds me of this documentary about chimpanzees I recently saw. In the documentary, there was an extremely violent, cannibalistic chimpanzee named Scar, and Vincent wears that same expression, the one that says, I’ll kill you and then I’ll eat you. Like the ape, Vincent also has a scar on his face, and like the ape, Vincent is impossibly big for his species. I suspect Vincent has been working out and taking steroids since high school, an impression that strengthens as I mentally flip through his dossier. On his social media, he posted pics where he’s posing like a bodybuilder, so I gather he might be into that sport. His muscles look like giant tumors in some places, and I suspect the ginormous latissimus dorsi muscles in his back are growing their own sets of muscles at this point—and those muscles might also have muscles.
After what feels like millennia—though I suspect it took less than a second—Gogi looks at his freaking phone. Ever so slowly, he clicks my link, and I watch in real time as blood leaves his face. Then his jaw muscles tighten, and his Stalin mustache twitches.
“Ada, take Mr. Spock in an unsuspicious manner, like you want to pet him,” I mentally order. “And be prepared to do exactly as I instruct. Same goes for you, Muhomor.”
“Police and your cousin have been notified,” Mitya reports.
Almost instantly, the texting app notifies me that I have a message from Joe. It states, “Do not engage Williams. I’m too far away from your location. Run.”
I see that Gogi has received the same not-so-useful advice from Joe, and he’s probably thinking the same thing I am. How are we supposed to run? Problem one is that we’re on a dead-end block with the bad guys blocking our exit. Problem two is that if we get up, the hidden assailants will become open assailants. Our only option is to use the restaurant’s back door—assuming it has one.
“Muhomor, get us schematics for the buildings on this block,” I say urgently. “We’re looking for back doors. Hack City Hall if you need to, but get it now.”
In the back of my mind, I wonder if this whole attack is Williams’s attempts to settle a score with Joe? Alternatively, is it possible an enemy of mine hired this goon? If so, who? Did my half-brother, Kostya, learn of my role in our father’s death and decide to take revenge? I decide to tackle this question later, in the unlikely event that we survive.
“Your stress levels are abnormal,” Einstein chimes in. “If I might recommend—”
“No audio feedback until I command otherwise,” I mentally snap at the poor AI. “If you want to be useful, launch the Batmobile app for me.”
The Batmobile app is what I’ve been calling an app Mitya wrote a few weeks back. It allows me to remotely drive Zapo 2 and lets Mitya control a couple of the high-end limousines that he owns in every major city. I rarely use the app because I usually ask Einstein to auto-deliver the car—a task the latest version of Einstein can easily do, thanks in part to Mitya’s brain-boosted coding prowess. Automating and controlling vehicles remotely is one of my friend’s obsessions.
In any case, with the various sensors embedded throughout Zapo 2, I can see the road on all sides of the vehicle. Using the app to start the engine, I carefully pull the car out of the parking spot and cruise it at five miles an hour down the street toward Vincent Williams and his pals.
“Schematics,” Muhomor says and uses the Teleconference app to pull up the necessary screens for all of us to see. “Also, more camera views.” Footage of our attackers shows up from different vantages. Some of the camera views seem to be fr
om the culprits’ own phones. If we survive, I’ll risk boosting Muhomor’s ego by telling him how awesome he is.
“No back exits that I can see,” Mitya mumbles. “There are windows facing the other street. Maybe if you break them—”
“And assuming they aren’t coming from that way too,” Muhomor interrupts.
As I drive the car and confirm Mitya’s analysis of the schematics, I also examine the weapons the bad guys possess while battling a heavy feeling settling in my stomach. “I can crash Zapo 2 into them. In the commotion, we can try escaping through the window Mitya mentioned,” I think half to myself and half to my friends. “Or I can move the car closer. We can jump in and—”
“Get sprayed with bullets on our way out of the block,” Muhomor cuts in. “I don’t think your windows are bulletproof, so jumping in won’t work.”
“Don’t tell us what won’t work without offering your own suggestions,” Mitya counters.
“Fine,” Muhomor says tersely. “How about—”
In that moment, Nikolozi comes out of the restaurant with the check.
Through the camera views, I see frantic movement happening behind the cars.
“Shit,” Mitya says somewhere in the distance. “He spooked the lurkers.”
I feel like my consciousness splits into two. One me speaks out loud while the other me sends mental messages. Mentally, I say, “Ada, run into the restaurant and hide in the refrigerated room here.” I highlight the spot on the schematic. “Muhomor, try to be useful. Mitya, if you haven’t already, report shots fired to the cops.” Out loud and at the same time as my mental messages, I bark, “Gogi, we’re being attacked.”
I then jump to my feet and turn over the table in front of us the way I’ve seen heroes do in movies.
Our adversaries no longer bother with stealth; their heads are now visible to the naked eye from behind the cars.
Blood pumps in my ears, and the world around me seems to move even slower—as though it was shot with an impossibly fast camera, or like I’m seeing everything in bullet-time, a la The Matrix. Then Williams fires his gun, and the fact that I don’t see the bullet mid-flight breaks the illusion.
A soul-piercing scream reverberates through the air.
Chapter Nine
Worry for Ada rips at me like a rabid bear, as it’s her voice I just heard. Without turning, I scan my surroundings through the restaurant’s security camera.
A body hits the ground behind us with a thump.
My breath whooshes out in a mix of horror and relief. The victim is not Ada, who must’ve been screaming in horror; it’s Nikolozi. The head wound I see in the camera leaves no room to doubt as to his horrific fate—not unless someone knows how to put parts of his brain back in his head.
Trying to keep my hand as steady as on the gun range, I aim the Glock. Part of me registers that Gogi is doing the same. I enable the HUD and the target-assist app. I’m now surrounded by small views into every camera I have access to, as well as some helpful gun stats, including the number of bullets in my gun—ten. I also have a virtual assist line that makes it nearly impossible to miss.
Cursing myself for not carrying extra ammo, I aim for the bad guys’ leader’s shoulder, but then I spot Gogi aiming for him as well. I change my target from Williams to Jason—a man who’s aiming at Gogi’s forehead. As I place the aim-assist line on Jason’s shoulder, I note that Ada is hurrying toward the restaurant. Good.
I pull the trigger.
Without the gun range’s earmuffs, the gunshot smacks my eardrums like a brick and creates the illusion that the recoil of my Glock is stronger than usual. My reward is the sight of Jason’s right shoulder turning into a bloody steak as he falls to the ground.
Gogi must’ve fired at the same time, but instead of hitting Williams, his target, the bullet hits the back of Ethan Madison, who, according to his dossier, is a new recruit in Williams’s crew. Ethan must’ve decided to take the bullet for his boss. Unless he’s wearing a bulletproof vest—a possibility to take into account—the decision just cost him his life. Ethan falls on top of Williams in a murder-scene-body-outline heap that tells me he wasn’t wearing a vest after all.
As I aim at my next target, I notice Muhomor running behind Ada. Despite the apparent cowardice of this move, I’m relieved, as he’s blocking Ada with his body.
Kevin, the next man I shoot in the shoulder, cries out, and Gogi takes his second shot. A man who used to be called Bob Young falls to the ground with a bullet in his cheekbone. Somehow, despite his scream, Kevin—the guy I shot—is still standing, so I waste another bullet, this time going for his right shoulder. This shot does the trick. Kevin slumps to the ground and screams like a detainee in the Abu Ghraib prison.
Ada and Muhomor are almost through the door. To give Ada the best cover I can, I mentally floor the gas of the Batmobile app and point Zapo 2 at the gap between two parked cars, where the majority of the remaining attackers are hiding. For good measure, I activate the nitro system, inspired by something I first saw in the Fast and the Furious movies. Sven, the guy who installed the nitro, warned me I could only use that feature twice before needing a refill, and more importantly, that Zapo’s tricked-out engine could easily get shot to shit from a single nitro use. But I think Sven would agree that if there was ever a time to risk the engine, this would be it.
Through Zapo’s microphones, as well as with my own ears, I hear the brain-shattering screech of metal and plastic tearing each other asunder. Through the cameras, I see Zapo rip through the back and front bumpers of the cars parked in its way. A couple of the assailants manage to jump out of the way, but two aren’t so lucky. One of them, Logan, is left lying on the asphalt, with a chunk of bone sticking out of his right leg like an ancient arrow tip and his blood gushing in a stomach-turning geyser. Another guy, nicknamed Deaf John, got hit with Zapo’s left mirror and is on the ground as well, hopefully knocked unconscious for a long time.
Though I’m flooring the mental brake pedal to spare the car any unnecessary damage, poor Zapo continues its unfortunate trajectory for another couple of feet, straight into the laundromat’s front window. I cringe when I hear the shattering sounds coming from the laundromat—sounds I perceive both through my real-world ears and from what Zapo’s microphones deliver to my brain’s hearing center. Then I needlessly blink my real-world eyes as the cameras show me Zapo hit the coin machine. The four front-facing cameras blink out of existence, but the side and back cameras still work, allowing me to see car parts and quarters fly in every direction.
“I fear Zapo 2 might’ve joined its predecessor in car heaven,” Mitya says from somewhere, but I ignore him.
Ada is inside the restaurant, but Muhomor is acting like a complete idiot. He turns around to see what the big bad noise was about.
“Go in!” I mentally shout at him. “Make sure Ada makes it into that fridge. Drag her in by force if you have to.”
I have to stop paying attention to Muhomor, because Williams uses the commotion to push Ethan off him, and he’s again ready for action.
“Watch out,” I scream for both Gogi’s and Muhomor’s sakes. I get a strong feeling that Williams is about to do something desperate.
Gogi and I duck behind the table, and through two camera views, I see Williams stick his gun around the badly damaged Volvo. My whole body tightens as Williams squeezes out a round of bullets in our general direction.
The table shatters into little pieces of stone, and a bullet whooshes by my ear. I guess tables aren’t as good a cover as they make them out to be in Hollywood.
My breathing is racecar fast, but since I’m out in the open, I decide to take advantage of the situation and put the aiming app’s line in the center of Williams’s exposed hand.
Two shots go off, mine and Williams’s.
My bullet goes right for his gun hand and must do damage, because his gun clinks to the ground. I see him clutching his right hand with his left and hear his pain-filled curses. To my horror,
though, I also hear a scream behind me.
It’s Ada.
Chapter Ten
Though it’s intensely tempting, I don’t dare look back. Instead, through the restaurant’s security feed in my HUD, I see Muhomor fall down, a huge red stain on his back.
To make a horrible situation worse, Ada rushes back from inside the cover of the restaurant, her face whiter than Mr. Spock’s fur.
“Run back in,” I telepathically shout at her, imbuing the message with as much anxiety and fear as the Telepathy app will allow. “Now, Ada!”
She doesn’t listen. With Mr. Spock in a death grip, Ada squats over Muhomor and grabs him by the back of his shirt.
“Cover her!” I scream at Gogi and mentally calculate how long it will take Ada to drag Muhomor’s body far enough inside for her to be safe.
Through the camera, I spot Dylan—a thin, bug-eyed flunky who’s been hiding to Williams’s left—rising to his feet. I aim the gun where his head will be in a moment and squeeze the trigger. I figure if he puts his head in the bullet’s path, it’s manslaughter, not murder. It could even be considered suicide. Dylan yelps and clutches the top of his head, and I both hate and respect myself for my relief at knowing I didn’t kill him.
Just in case the head wound is too light, and since I have a clear shot at his right shoulder, I reluctantly put my sixth bullet into it. He collapses, screaming and clutching at the injury.
I breathe easier when I see Ada disappear inside the restaurant again, though instead of going to the freezer as I ordered her to do, she crouches by the entrance, ripping Muhomor’s shirt from his body.
“The bullet hit his spine.” A wave of horror accompanies her telepathic message. “He might never walk again—if he doesn’t bleed to death.”
As Ada’s words register, the utter despair I feel makes me wonder if this whole thing is one of those pre-cog moments that happen during the adjustment period of a new brain boost.