Child of the Fall

by D Scott Johnson

  There was a crisis that she had helped make. Her hero planned a mass murder that beggared the imagination. June would now play a part in stopping it. Once it was over, she’d have to try to figure out how to restart a life that she’d driven so far down a dead-end street she couldn’t see where it began. There was no way to express out loud what she felt.

  She nodded once and shut the door.

  ***

  At least June didn’t have to use the front entrance. Judging by the crowds, it would take hours to get in that way.

  Anna must’ve had the same thought. They crossed paths a dozen meters from the employee entrance.

  “June,” she said with a bright smile. “Walk with me.”

  Cyril was wrong. It was all a lie. In a moment of weakness, she believed someone she shouldn’t. Anna was a pillar of the green movement, and June worked directly with her. It was the fulfillment of all her dreams.

  The oupa on her shoulder urged her to tell Anna about Cyril, then smiled when she remained silent. She couldn’t tell Anna about Cyril. Not yet. And she didn’t know why.

  Are you sure?

  Anna led them to a nearby picnic area and sat down at a table, motioning for June to sit opposite her. “I’ve got updates on the device.”

  The pulse of curiosity didn’t overcome her sour stomach. “Does it have anything to do with all that?” They could still see the main road and parking lot from here. If anything, it was even more congested.

  Anna immediately became guarded, eyes shifting side to side for a moment. “Yes. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  “I’m listening.” It came out colder than June intended. Oupa’s smile got wider.

  “With the AI network compromised, will you still be able to monitor the approaches to the plant? We’ve always been at risk for…”

  When the pause dragged on across an extra heartbeat, Oupa whispered in her ear, Armageddon?

  “…wildfire, and we only have the one main road. We don’t want anyone getting trapped.”

  The one road. The isolation. The outsized environmental control. The warehouses filled with shelf-stable food.

  She still had to know for sure. “What happens to the students who can’t make the deadline?”

  Anna’s eyes grew misty. “We’re on the cusp of an incredible discovery now.”

  It was Anna’s passion that fired June up. None of what Cyril said could be true.

  “And your discovery is what made it possible. You are such a critical part of the plan. You always were.” She chuckled, a comfortable, intimate sound. “Advanced technology skills have always been lacking in the radical green movement. Soon they’ll be even more rare.”

  The warm feeling of Anna’s humor and confidence vanished. June often ignored the subtexts they all hinted at in conversations.

  She couldn’t afford to ignore them anymore. “Why do you say that?”

  The friendliness in Anna’s eyes changed into a raw cunning that would normally make June look away, but the oupa on her shoulder wouldn’t let her. This is what you’ve ignored all this time, he said quietly in her ear. Watch and learn.

  For a moment June thought Anna would tell the truth. It made for an excited, nauseating fist in her chest. What would June do if she was let in on it? She still wanted to believe in all this. She had to believe in all this.

  June drove over an hour the last Sunday of every month to attend a proper Anglican church. The tall girl from a remote farm in Mpumalanga Province had a moral compass with an arrow made of steel. She would not, could not, agree to anything that monstrous.

  A part of what June felt must’ve shown on her face. Anna pulled back. “The plant will change everything. We’re all going on a journey, and I need to make sure someone like you stands with us as we move forward.”

  It wasn’t an answer to her question. Anna was a master of that. They all were.

  Oupa whispered, Is it an answer you will accept, though?

  Yes. It was. “So tell me what you’ve discovered about the device.”

  ***

  Spencer was already waiting in the lab when she arrived. He had changed from his Trilogy outfit to the standard collared shirt and khakis June had made sure were provided to him the day before. It transformed him from a fanatic into just another employee. It was a small comfort, but right now she would take what she could get.

  “What the hell is going on out there? It’s like a zoo. I’ve never seen that much granola in my whole fucking life.” He sniffed his sleeve. “And what is it about hippies and patchouli? The stink is in my clothes. It’s nuts.”

  She sat down beside him. Time for an experiment. “Cyril says hi.”

  Spencer got a confused look, then his skin paled. “How do you know Cyril?”

  Bingo. “He’s been living with me for six days now.”

  He went even more pale. “Six days? How did you…when did he…” Spencer closed his eyes for a moment. “Fuck, I can’t call anyone for advice. You own the network I’d use.”

  This was definitely outside the range of behavior she thought was normal for a member of Trilogy. Which had to mean… “You’re not really from Trilogy, are you?”

  He was still trying to digest her revelation and didn’t get the reference. “What?”

  June was two for two now. “Trilogy. You’re not a member. You only talk like one when you think about it. It’s not natural to you.”

  He got a cagey look. “I never said I was a particularly good member.”

  Part of this new leaf she had turned over was trusting her intuition—the oupa on her shoulder—which knew what a pile of kak landing on the ground sounded like. “Cyril said I should trust you, but I don’t think it’s possible to trust a fanatic dedicated to his own self-destruction. Not with the job we have in front of us.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Spencer,” a new, male voice with a British accent spoke from a speaker on the ceiling. “If you were any worse at questioning people I’d suspect you were a member of the Spanish Inquisition. Except you can’t make the excuse of an over-reliance on a hot poker up the backside. Madam, might the job we have in front of us be stopping this monument to why monkeys should not be allowed to use tools?”

  Spencer threw his hands in the air as he glared at the speaker on the ceiling. “Jesus Fucking Christ, Edmund. Just tell her everything why don’t you?”

  “Do you have a better idea for spanning the air gap?” A different voice, female and with an American accent, asked.

  June activated the scanning tools she’d used last night. The readings were different, and unprecedented. “Goede heer…”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” Spencer asked.

  June barely tore her eyes away from the findings. “You uploaded unduplicates to my network. I specifically scanned for that. You managed it anyway. How did you do this?” The sophistication rates were off the charts. She’d never seen anything like it. And there were two of them.

  A holo window opened on the shared vision channel. In it stood a man who looked like he should be employed at a Renaissance faire. That must be Edmund. Next to him was a more conventionally dressed girl not much older than Spencer. “We’re clever that way,” she said. “Well, I am, and I brought Mr. Sparkle Pants here along for the ride.”

  The man beside her rolled his eyes and put his head in his hand. “Oh, God.”

  Spencer asked, “So I’m supposed to trust her? Just like that?”

  “No,” Edmund replied. “Not just like that. She came to you. And we wouldn’t be having this conversation at all if we’d let you mince about like Marlowe’s Edward.”

  “You mean to tell me,” Spencer said, “that I didn’t have to memorize all that horse shit after all? I still have a migraine from it. Goddamn it, you guys made me pray.”

  June couldn’t get over the findings. Edmund was five orders of magnitude more sophisticated than any AI she had ever seen, here or anywhere else. W
hatever was going on with his companion confused all the sensors. They couldn’t provide a reading at all. June was first and foremost a world-class expert on AI, and Spencer’s two companions were so outrageous she would’ve denied they could exist the moment anyone proposed them.

  And yet here they were, having a ferocious row with the boy who’d brought them. But he wasn’t a boy anymore. Now that he dropped his disguise, she could see a fierce intelligence that made him seem years older. And that was what he had done. Right in front of her, without changing any material thing, he transformed from a shy underage nerd into…well, whatever he was, he certainly had nothing to do with Trilogy.

  Cyril had some impressive friends.

  June tried to get their attention politely. When that didn’t work she slammed her broad hand flat on the table. All three of them jumped. Spontaneous fear reflex in an AI would have to wait to be examined. They had a bigger problem.

  “Whatever you three are planning, we need to get on with it.” She turned to Spencer. “That chaos you saw upstairs? It’s Anna’s doing. She’s gathering up her flock as we speak. The deadline for everyone to be here is tomorrow. And after that?”

  “After that,” Edmund said, “we are undoubtedly as pickled as the Duke of Clarence himself.”

  Chapter 31

  Mike

  His face was hot, and his head pounded. Moving would make it better for a second, and then the pain would come back. He didn’t have his phone on so his threads pulsed and coiled, rolling in and out of his control. The blinding red of his closed eyes got worse when he opened them and sunlight spiked in. This hurt more than the time when he lost count of the shots of ouzo Uncle Kostas kept handing him. Mike turned aside and put his hand up. The relief of being able to see stopped dead when he looked around.

  Tonya was splayed out on the floor, and Emily was collapsed in a chair beside them. Kim was passed out against his arm. His heartbeat jumped in time with his threads before he checked her pulse. She wasn’t dead, just unconscious. He got up quickly when she let out a low moan, which ruined the delicate balance of his threads. Mike gripped the arm of the couch so he wouldn’t fall over.

  “Mike?” Kim asked. By her tone she was hurting at least as bad as he was. At least there was no touch madness.

  “Here.” Wherever that was. Then he remembered. Will was gone, and so were the scientists. He staggered down the hall, going from one improvised handhold to another. Doorknobs shouldn’t be this hard to open, even hung over. He checked the monitors on his body’s autonomic functions. They reported back an extremely high concentration of trichloroethanol.

  Ah-ha.

  He had learned what slipping you a Mickey meant while building out a film noir realm for a client in London years ago. Someone, it had to be the scientists, had literally given them one. It had never occurred to him to set up a metabolic warning filter on a thing that basic. Humanity’s knowledge of how to poison each other seemed to have no end of variation. He tasked some threads to make sure this particular trick would never work on him again.

  Fat lot of good it did at the moment.

  Kim groaned on the couch while he searched. “Where’s Will?”

  “I don’t know. The scientists are gone too.” All for the lack of a stupid filter. His mental kicks added to the misery of the drug’s hangover.

  “Mike, come back. You need to check on Emily and Tonya.”

  He turned around in time to see Kim lose her balance and tumble to the floor in a heap. He ran back when she screamed, stripping his shirt off as he went. “What’s wrong?”

  She gasped and strangled out, “My arm.” Kim looked up and with a wincing moan, wrapped the sleeve he offered her around her hand and pulled herself upright. Her sling stuck out of her purse. He got it and handed it to her; she would push too hard getting it herself.

  “I’m fine,” she said. It was an obvious lie, but he was in no better shape. “I’ll search for Will. You check them.”

  Arguing with her would be useless, even when she cried out as she stood. Her arm must be much worse.

  Emily stirred after a few shakes, then woke up faster than either he or Kim had managed. “Where’s Will?”

  “Kim’s looking for him. The scientists are gone, too. I think they might’ve taken him.”

  Emily swore and went to help Kim search.

  Tonya didn’t stir at all. Her breathing and pulse seemed fine. He had no way to check further than that without a phone. Hers was gone too. He should be able to reach emergency services with his threads, but he had never tried that before.

  “Kim,” he shouted, “they took our phones. Should I try to call the police the hard way?” There was a real risk of exposure if he managed it. 911 expected to see an address on the other end, and they’d definitely want to know why his call didn’t have one.

  Her voice echoed from the upstairs. “Not yet. We need to talk about it. How’s Tonya?”

  He looked at his friend. She seemed less drugged but wouldn’t wake up. “I don’t know.”

  Emily came upstairs from the basement just as Kim appeared on the landing above. “Anything?”

  Kim gripped the rail. He could see her white knuckles. “No. I’m sorry.”

  Emily wiped her eyes and gasped out a helpless sob. “They took my child.” She collapsed into a dining room chair, head on the table.

  They should’ve done what Kim wanted. All this would’ve been avoided then. Tears streamed down his own cheeks.

  Kim sat down next to him. “Hey.”

  He wiped his eyes. “Hey,” he said to her. He hated feeling this helpless.

  Kim looked at Tonya for a moment. “Open her shirt, just there.” She indicated a space between Tonya’s breasts.

  There was a tiny red dot on her blouse he hadn’t noticed before. Gingerly, he undid two buttons and revealed what looked like a bug bite, or maybe a bee sting, just below her bra.

  “Thought so,” Kim said. “They hit her with a safe-stop. We don’t have a reverse agent, so we’ll have to wait it out. They hit me with at least a dozen of these things when they arrested us at the hotel. She’ll be fine. Could you put her on the couch? She might as well be comfortable.”

  Emily walked up to them. “Safe-stops. Those sons of bitches.” Mike watched her struggle with a rage that was almost a physical thing, but she managed to fight it off. “We kept them around in case Will had to be transported in an emergency.” She got up and went into the kitchen. After a quick rummage, Emily let out a string of curses. “That’s what they used. They took the rest and the reverse agent. Kim, Tonya will be fine. They were the best money could buy.” There was a pause. Mike could almost hear the rumbling. “I will never trust that man ever again, so help me God.”

  Next to him, Tonya took a deep breath and came up swinging, managing to land a glancing blow against his jaw before he caught her arms. The stars reminded him of his hangover, and his threads upped the ante by grinding together like ropes covered in shards of glass. The scientists were going to pay for all this.

  “WILL! THEY’VE GOT WILL!” After some desperate jerks, she came to her senses. Glancing around frantically she asked, “What time is it?”

  He checked. “Almost four o’clock.”

  Tonya swore. “They’ve had the whole damn day.”

  “But why?” Emily asked.

  Answering her question fully would reveal Kim’s relationship to Will, and Watchtell’s role in it. He shared a look with Kim.

  “It’s complicated,” Kim said. “But before we start that story,” she turned to him, “can you get to the local realmspaces without your phone? See where they went, or who they were?”

  Mike closed his eyes and concentrated. The bridge between his real self and his host was eased by a phone connection, but it wasn’t required. He and Helen both practiced going without one for a few hours a week. He was getting better at it, but it was like handling things with tongs. Clumsy tongs.

  First, the bad news. “They’ve era
sed the house’s network. A real hatchet job. It’ll need to be reinstalled before it works properly again.”

  “What about the neighborhood?”

  He had all of Kim’s back door codes for that. His real self’s perception was soft and blurry, and he had to be careful not to invert a realm. That would destroy everything outright. “I can see the vehicle, but not the license plate.” He watched Tonya’s confrontation with Silas. They weren’t very gentle about bringing her back to the house.

  The truck started to move. “Kim, how far have you compromised things?”

  “Not very. Try to get a general direction and then follow them with the public traffic cams. Emily, do you have anything to write on? We can take directions and figure it out when we get new phones.”

  “I’m…wait, he’s online without a…sorry. Yes.”

  After a moment there was a clattering on the coffee table.

  “Here.”

  “Thanks.”

  With a phone, he could gradually split his perception into hundreds, even thousands of different threads. Like this he was fortunate to have a single perspective. “They went south.” It was hard to stay oriented jumping from cam to cam. Most of the leaps were guesses. Every time they changed direction or took a ramp, he called it out. “They’re sticking with expressways. No surface streets so far.”

  He could barely hang on to the feeds, so it took most of an hour before the destination became clear.

  “They took him to the airport,” he said. Great. More air travel. He rubbed his eyes before he opened them. It felt like he’d been running a marathon. Normally it wasn’t that bad, even when he split into hundreds. Mike needed to get a training regimen going.

  “Tonya’s SUV is still here,” Kim said, then turned to her. “They took your phone. Did you set up voice security?”

  “Morgan knows better than to fool with me, phone or not. He’ll let me in.”

  “Let’s make sure.”

  His vision cleared as they left to check out the car in the driveway. Emily sat across from him, mouth open, eyes wide. “You did all that without a realmspace connection? Are you special forces?” She looked Mike up and down, and he became acutely aware he hadn’t put his shirt back on. “You’ve got the build for it. But they’re supposed to take those implants out when you leave. And they only work with special relay trucks anyway.”