by Eliot Peper
The chief masquerader nodded and led his compatriots up the spiral staircase.
“Move,” said Emily, and Lowell followed.
Lowell struggled as he carried Emily up the stairs. His breath came in sharp pants, and his body was so slick with his sweat and her blood that Emily had to constantly calibrate her grip. She counted the turns, keeping a close eye on the back of the masqueraders ahead and throwing occasional glances over her shoulder to make sure nobody was following, but these guests were not about to risk their necks for Lowell. They’d wait below until they were certain the action had resolved itself.
An unexpected wave of gratitude washed over Emily. Whether or not she made it out alive, there were people in this world she was willing to risk everything for, and who might just do the same for her. She might not have much else, but what more could you ask for?
“I—I think I’m gonna faint,” gasped Lowell, reaching a hand out to lean against the stone wall.
“Deep breaths,” said Emily. Between the blood loss and the combat hangover, her head was spinning too. “That’s it. You can do this.”
And then they came around the final curve, and the lead masquerader opened the stainless-steel door. His compatriots marched out and then Lowell stumbled through the faux mist and into the kitchen and they were shoving Chibundi out of the way and the feed came flooding back in all its overwhelming glory, the gentle touch of a digital deity that Emily had never thought she’d feel again, and Emily was broadcasting “Zeppelin zeppelin zeppelin” on the emergency channel.
“Extraction team is eleven minutes out,” Diana’s calm efficiency almost drove Emily to tears. No questions. No bullshit. “Haruki’s running point. We’re tracking your position. Hang in there.”
The masqueraders fanned out into the ax-throwing arcade, cutting through the crowd in a wedge, Lowell staggering in their wake. The jostled guests stared and pointed, not knowing what to make of the bloody demon riding on the back of their illustrious host and holding a knife to his throat, glitter sparkling off the few sections of her skin that Vasilios hadn’t shredded, their fractals blending into each other so that Emily and Lowell might be a single nightmare creature, Frankenstein’s monster escaping from the mad scientist’s dungeon laboratory. As they moved from gallery to gallery, guests began to follow them, astronauts and witches and zombies whispering and rubbernecking and desperate to know whether this was part of some grand plan, an unexpected twist in the night’s entertainment that would soon become legend in the tight-knit community of global socialites.
“It won’t work, you know,” said Lowell between heavy breaths.
“What?” His jerky steps were making Emily seasick.
“Whatever it is you’re hoping to accomplish,” said Lowell. “Fix inequality. Eliminate waste. End corruption. Heal every social ill. Turn the world into a techno-utopia. Commonwealth has a savior complex, but you arrogant pricks can’t seem to wrap your oh-so-smart heads around the fact that you’re your own worst enemy.”
“I’m not really in the mood for riddles,” said Emily. “And if I were you, I’d try to keep the woman with the wakizashi in a positive state of mind.”
They entered the main atrium, and the lights strobing up and down the tree left hazy trails in Emily’s vision. The masqueraders marched straight down the middle between the opposing alcohol and narcotics bars. Guests peered over balconies, stoked the rumor mill, and joined the mass of people following in their wake.
“You think that if you manage to stop us and institute progressive membership that it’ll be some kind of endgame,” said Lowell. “Another step toward Rachel’s grand vision, or the board’s or whatever. But those people in the cave, the ones you’re so eager to thwart, they’re the least of your problems. Nation, profession, religion . . . the feed undermines so many institutions at once, so many traditional sources of identity, that you’ve earned enemies on all sides. Government officials who see their authority corroding, cultural minorities who want to protect their children from the influence of the global feed, there were so many groups I could have organized to oppose Commonwealth, so many groups that are organizing themselves to oppose Commonwealth. I just picked rich people because it was easy. Small head count, simple pitch serving their self-interest, a strong sense of urgency because of Javier’s pending proposal.”
Bass thrummed through them as they passed beneath the DJ’s balcony and emerged onto the grounds. There were screams from the ecstatic revelers that the masqueraders pushed roughly out of the way, opening a path through the middle of the dance floor.
Lowell had to shout to be heard as they descended the steps lit by fire dancers. “The feed connected everyone. Then Commonwealth leveraged its utility to disenfranchise everyone. Now just a handful of people hold the keys to all of civilization, and everyone else fucking hates you for it, especially folks who used to hold keys of their own. Everything you do wins you enemies. Rachel hates politics. I get it, a lot of entrepreneurs do. She wants results. She wants to optimize metrics and achieve milestones. Well, you know what’s efficient? Dictatorship. But what used to be a feature is now a bug. Rachel hates politics so much that she accidentally turned the world into an autocracy.”
“Whereas you’re happy to kidnap innocents to seize power on behalf of your oligarch pals,” said Emily. “If you’re hoping to flip me, this isn’t much of a pitch.”
Wood creaked underfoot as Lowell took his first step onto the dock. The masqueraders formed a line blocking the hundreds of onlookers filling the grounds from following them out over the water. “I hope you enjoy your little moment,” he said. “Because Rachel is nearing the end of her reign. You can kill me. You can expose those assholes downstairs. You can implement your stupid plan. You can win every battle, and you’ll still lose the war. That’s the thing about being queen. The bigger your realm, the bigger the bull’s-eye on your back. This empire is so flimsy, it’ll shake itself apart without my help.”
“Incoming,” advised Diana via Emily’s feed.
Suddenly hundreds of lights began pouring through the mountain passes on the far side of the lake. An alarm went off up in the mansion, its high-pitched wail slicing through the pounding music as security drones streaked up from launchpads hidden in the surrounding forest. Emily realized that the lights racing across the water toward them must be Commonwealth drones. The two fleets met above the middle of the lake, corkscrewing into impossibly fast dogfights, raking each other with projective and missile fire, loosing chaff to stave off the inevitable, and erupting into successive fireballs in spectacular fashion, the detonations and sonic booms echoing off the surrounding mountains. Debris crashed into the lake, throwing up clouds of smoke and steam. New squadrons entered the fray in tight formation. The aerial battle turned the entire valley into a vast fireworks display, and the DJ, thinking this must be a climax to the night’s festivities, maxed out the volume, filling every interstitial moment between explosions with thumping beats and looping melody. The crowd of onlookers filled the grounds beneath the colossal pink laser, writhing and cheering and pumping fists in awe-struck wonder.
Something nudged Emily’s foot.
“Are you turned on right now?” she asked in disbelief.
“Well, if you’re not going to kill me,” said Lowell, “I thought you might be down to fuck. All this excitement has me riled up.”
Then downdraft blasted over them, and Lowell stumbled before regaining his balance, the wind excruciating against Emily’s open wounds. Her head spun, and darkness encroached on her peripheral vision. A large chopper was descending, kicking up ripples across the water. It touched down lightly on the dock between them and the shore, its rotors carrying most of its weight. Four men in full combat gear spilled out and charged toward them. The one in the lead threw Emily a casual salute.
“Ms. Kim,” he said. “I’m Haruki Abe, director of field ops. It’s time to get you out of here.”
“Mr. Harding is coming with us,” she said. “
Do me a favor. Kick him in the balls”—Haruki promptly sent a boot into Lowell’s crotch—“and cuff him.”
Releasing her grip, Emily slid from Lowell’s back and onto the dock as he crumpled to curl up in fetal position next to her. Haruki and his team had to carry them both to the chopper as the audience applauded and the sky burned.
CHAPTER 33
Emily stepped out of the elevator and into a sculpture garden. Paths curved between installations, connecting seating areas where Commonwealth employees chatted and worked, submerged in their feeds. Moss grew on one side of a stone whale breaching through gravel. A group of visiting students wandered through a driftwood maze. There was even a life-size bear made from thousands of fused antique American pennies. The air smelled fresh and clean, no hint of the recycled staleness typical of skyscrapers this size.
This was her first time inside a Commonwealth building. The organization behind the feed was something she had always viewed from the outside, depending on Javier for gossip on the all-too-fallible stewards of the world’s information infrastructure.
Years ago, Emily had tended the garden outside of the big house up on the Island. She’d always eschewed gloves, preferring to feel the moist earth on her hands even if it got under her fingernails. Reading up on horticulture, Emily had been surprised to discover that the biggest living thing was not the now-extinct blue whale but a mushroom whose underground tendrils spread through a patch of soil four kilometers wide. That mycelium, the single-celled filaments that formed vast three-dimensional networks underground, connected trees in a complex, redundant, and scalable network, a biological feed that conveyed nutrients and information between root systems, stitching forests into integrated, resilient arboreal superorganisms. Now she stood in a node of the digital mycelium that stitched together humanity into something similar, and no gloves could have kept her from getting her hands dirty.
Buoyed by painkillers, Emily made her way along the path leading to the conference room. Bandages covered most of her body, making her movements feel awkward and stiff. Even through the mental cotton candy of the drugs, she could feel the deep ache in her joints. Two fights in one week was far too much, especially when one of them was involuntary.
The real miracle was that she had survived at all.
May fortune favor the bold. She shook her head, hoping that whatever cell they were holding Lowell in was small and uncomfortable. She could still hear the burble of the subterranean stream, still taste the thick mineral air, still see Vasilios’s grotesque corpse when she closed her eyes.
She reached up to push her lucky glasses up her nose, but they weren’t there. While she liked their aesthetic, she’d never needed them to correct her vision. Their secret venom had always been a last-ditch defense, but more than anything they had been a reminder of impermanence, the transient nature of life on this strange little planet tucked into a random solar system in the corner of a backwater galaxy in an expanding universe. Maintaining respect for mortality had always helped her stick to her guns in trying times, but now that the glasses had proven their luck, maybe she didn’t need replacements to see the world through that particular lens.
“Em!”
Javier ran toward her up the path, gangly limbs flying and eyes wide. Despite the gray in his hair and the limp in his gait, something about his unselfconscious charge resurrected the boy who had become her brother. He wrapped his long arms around her, then immediately let go as he felt the bandages beneath her clothes and heard her involuntary gasp.
“Oh no,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay.” She grimaced, but it was the sweetest pain she’d ever felt. “The docs assure me I’ll heal up. A hug isn’t going to do me in.”
He bit his lip.
“Look, Em . . .” Lines creased his forehead as he grasped for words. “I—I’m sorry. I’ve been a jerk. When you left, it—it made me feel like I was a little kid again, that my mom was ditching us for the hundredth time. But you weren’t my mom, and I wasn’t a little kid. I keep blaming you for leaving me in charge, but I was the one who decided to take over. I don’t know what you’ve been through over the years, but you have every right to your privacy. I’ve just missed you so much. When Lowell took you through that door and you went dark . . . Diana had to kick me out of the command center. I just couldn’t bear to lose you again.”
“Sounds like Rosa’s gotten to you.” Emily laughed, emotion welling up.
“She’s always been smarter than me,” said Javier ruefully.
“Same here,” said Emily. “I don’t know what we did right with her, but she’s a hell of a person.”
“Seriously.”
“Javi”—now it was Emily’s turn to struggle for words—“I’m the jerk. I’m the one who left with no explanation. I’m the one who privileged my sense of honor over our friendship. I was being selfish, wallowing in my broken pride. Seeing you again just makes me realize how sorry I am, and how lucky.”
Javier wiped his eyes with his black leather sleeve.
“They’re waiting for you in there,” he said.
“Then let’s do this thing before my painkillers wear off.”
CHAPTER 34
Seagulls glided in a ragged line toward the Golden Gate Bridge, trimming their wings to ride the incoming marine breeze. Alcatraz sat barren and defiant in the wind-blown surf, the prison-turned-museum waiting for the day when rising sea levels submerged the rocky island. Fog had built up against the Marin Headlands, the white mass poised like a tsunami, ready to sweep away the entire Bay Area.
In contrast, the waters of the Strait of Juan de Fuca were darker, stormier, hinting at a power humming beneath the waves that was somehow more diffuse this far south. The Island was a beacon, an oasis amid the rise and fall of swell, old-growth forest covering loamy soil, blackberry bushes the size of houses that yielded their exquisite fruit to those willing to brave the thorns. They had made it their home. With Southern California reduced to ash and rubble, it was the only home they had. Maybe, just maybe, it was a home to which Emily might return.
“The attorney general is pulling his hair out,” said Liane. “We’ve had calls from the governor, both senators from Idaho, the FBI, the Pentagon, the president’s chief of staff, even the FAA. Lowell’s own attorneys are raising hell. It’s a hot mess.”
The simmering anger in Liane’s words called Emily’s attention to the world inside the wall-to-wall windows. They sat around a solid-glass conference table. The bouquet of white lilies at its center appeared to levitate in midair because the table and the crystal vase were transparent. Beads of condensation clung to the pitcher of ice water. The expressions around the table ranged from stern to furious.
“You heard Ms. Kim’s testimony,” said Diana, and Emily was touched by the woman’s unerring confidence in her, the conviction with which she’d ordered the evacuation. Emily hadn’t known Diana long enough to claim to understand her, but she’d learned enough to reveal the inadequacy of her preconceptions about the spymaster. “Emily was there on our orders. We did what we had to in order to get her out alive. Lowell is in our custody and this building is an embassy, our sovereign soil. Let them whine. The FBI can’t just roll in to claim him. We have breathing room, and we’ve shown any other schemers that we’re ready to take necessary action.”
“She was there on your orders, you mean,” said Liane. Desperation undergirded her tone. How would Emily feel in her place, saddled with the creation and administration of a brand-new legal system, establishing precedent in disaster after disaster, all too aware of the unintended consequences each decision would set off? “Orders that resulted in starting a goddamn shooting war in the Rocky Mountains. Half the attendees at that godforsaken party broadcast the whole thing via feed. Do you have any idea of the concessions we’ll have to make in Washington?”
“Other governments will demand reciprocity,” said Baihan. He was cool and collected, and Emily had the sense that he was assessing the posit
ions of all the players, seeking opportunities for advantage, architecting his next move. Emily smiled despite herself. Canny old Hsu would have been proud. “The UN Security Council is drafting a resolution. Amsterdam and Tokyo have both been harassing my people.”
“Diana, I think it’s time for you to take a leave of absence,” said Sofia with grim satisfaction. “You were trying to do your best in a tough spot, but the situation is untenable.”
Some wounds take a long time to heal. And some reopen again and again. Sofia had been Diana’s agent inside Commonwealth for years, the price of her loyalty the visas Diana had secured for her family. But released from the yoke, she must chafe at having to work with her former case officer, must want to oust Diana as soon as Rachel handed over Commonwealth’s reins. Maybe this was her opportunity to strike, or at least to lay the groundwork for a fall from grace.
Diana guffawed. “Looking for a scapegoat, sweetie? You know what’s untenable? What Emily confirmed at Lowell’s shindig. We’ve got a Dutch prince, a Japanese heiress, a hedge-fund hotshot, and a bunch of other high-net-worth VIPs conspiring to meddle in Commonwealth governance and happy to attack us and our families in the process.” Emily could almost smell Rosa, that unique olfactory fingerprint laced with traces of makrut lime. Then Dag’s half-finished sketch of their twin girls flashed in Emily’s mind’s eye. They all had people they loved, and in the wrong hands, that love could be a weapon. “We have their mastermind in custody. If that’s the kind of situation you want to smooth over, then maybe we’ve got the wrong successor queued up to captain this particular ship.”
Rachel raised a hand that was little more than skin and bone. The room fell silent, but the glares could melt steel. This woman had built a juggernaut, acquiring startup after startup, sinking competitor after competitor, recruiting genius after genius to assemble the miracle that was the feed. It was hard to picture Rachel in the prime of her youth, but could she ever have imagined what Commonwealth might one day become? She really had made a dent in the universe, making good on the famously unbridled ambitions of Silicon Valley. She had started out as an entrepreneur and had become a monarch.