by John Conroe
The major was reading something on a mini-tablet, then typed on it, old-school fashion with his two thumbs. He looked up, glanced at the doors, then turned to his team.
“So we have no real idea of what…” Yoshida started to say but the lab doors opened and the two Department of Defense guys that I knew as Agents Black and White entered, along with about ten other guys in the same black suits that the agents wore.
“What are you doing here?” Yoshida asked, tone outraged. Yoshida had never gotten outraged before, just deadly angry. It was odd—almost forced. An act?
Agent Black, who was white, moved directly for our group, eyes locked onto the Spider’s metal carcass. Agent White, whose skin was darker than mine, slowed to look at the Decimator as he followed. The other agents carried metal boxes the size and shape of large volume beer coolers. Really large beer coolers.
“We’ll take it from here,” Black said, his men moving up and pushing the three scientists out of their way. Immediately, the men in suits started to pack the metal boxes with Spider parts.
Yoshida pushed in front of me, his left hand holding his mini-tablet back my way, the action hidden by his body. I took it from his hand and backed away from the sudden press of people around the Spider.
“That drone is Zone Defense property,” Yoshida objected, moving up and bulling into the mix of agents around the disassembled drone. That caused some return shoving and I took the distraction as an opportunity to look at the tablet.
If they get too grabby, say Unit 19, then say Patrol.
He’d known they were coming—maybe got advanced warning from some of his people elsewhere in the building, and he was thinking that they might try to grab the Decimator, too? Some kind of power play was in motion, or… cover up?
“Ah, Mr. Gurung. So you’ve joined the major’s little group?” Agent Black asked, eyes now locked on me. He kept watching me but turned his head and spoke to his agents. “Transfer all computer, video, photographic recordings, and observations evidence to our keeping and wipe the rest clean.”
One of the agents nodded and sat down at an AI workstation, immediately moving his hands while both eyes glowed red as he accessed the network on his iContacts.
Agent White was still staring at the quiescent Decimator and he now turned to look my way, his expression thoughtful.
“Bag this thing too,” he suddenly said, waving at the hovering drone.
“Unit 19?” I asked, trying to sound startled. Instantly the Decimator lit up, coming awake at my words. Ah, so that’s how it was. “P…patrol,” I said, coughing a little in a lame attempt to cover it.
Unit 19 shot straight up overhead, then accelerated forward and out the open lab doors like a bullet.
“Oh wow. It took off,” I said, trying for an aw gee tone of surprise. “Were did it go?”
Agent White was glaring at me, but Black just nodded thoughtfully. “Well played, Major,” he said. “Alright, let’s get this wrapped up and get out of here,” he said to his crew, whirling one hand in a winding up motion.
His men hauled the now packed boxes of Spider parts out, the two senior agents following. Agent White was the last to go, and he turned, pointing his index and middle fingers first at his own eyes then poking them out at all of us before leaving without a word.
“Major, what the hell?” Aaron asked, incredulous.
“There are things you all don’t understand. Things above all of our pay grades. That was one of them,” Yoshida said, his sudden anger magically morphing into determined action.
“They confiscated the Spider, all of our notes and information, and they would have taken the Decimator too?” Maya asked.
“Yes, and they have the authority to do both. I couldn’t intervene,” Yoshida said, typing on his tablet madly.
“But if I gave a verbal command, being an outsider and a civilian, there were less consequences?” I asked.
“Theoretically,” the major said. “They could also have arrested you, but there wouldn’t have been much point. Unit 19 was most likely going to be held as a hostage for our good behavior. Now he’s not. I learned that little trick, or a version of it, from one of the best.” He nodded in my direction.
Okay, point to the major.
“That’s why you didn’t let us take Ajaya out of Unit 19’s command loop?” Eric asked.
“I’m scary good, but I’m not that good. I had you leave him in because 19 did better alongside Ajaya and his Berkut than ever before. I was going to have us run more joint drills.”
“I didn’t even know I was ever in its command loop,” I said.
“When we sent it to help you on the bridge against Lotus. If you had given any orders, it would have obeyed. Now… I have to get down to General Davis and lodge my formal protest. It won’t do a damned bit of good, but it’s expected. Gotta keep up the act. When Unit 19 circles back, download any recordings it might have made of your Spider dissection,” Yoshida said.
“Oh! That’s why you insisted the charging station be set up right there,” Maya said, a note of admiration in her voice.
Yoshida shrugged. “Redundancy is a survival protocol. Just ask Mr. Gurung how much redundancy he uses in his forays into the Zone, eh, Ajaya?”
I just nodded, impressed with his foresight. Unit 19 might have detailed video and audio recordings of the whole Spider analysis.
“I also want you all to dig deep and make detailed personal reports of everything you can remember about the Spider. Everything. Then make copies of all of it, let’s say, oh, I don’t know… ten. I’ll be back after I talk with the general. Ajaya, come with me. I want to walk you out.”
Chapter 7
“Why would the DoD confiscate Lotus?” I asked as soon as we got into the hallway.
Yoshida waited for a white-coated technician to walk past us before answering.
“There is a whole lot about the Zone that you don’t understand, Ajaya,” he said, head swiveling to look for anyone nearby.
“Like who actually caused the attack and why?” I asked, taking a huge chance.
His head snapped around my way, eyes first wide, then narrowed and hard. “You’re entirely too smart for your own good. Or you have access to information that you haven’t shared?”
“I basically grew up in the Zone—I’ve seen, read, observed all kinds of things in there that conflict with the public version of events. I’ve guessed even more.”
“That kind of speculation can get deadly, Ajaya,” he said. “And I never heard you make that comment.”
“What comment?” I played along.
“Exactly. Now, let’s just say there are power factions in our government that are at odds over the Zone. While the majority want the Zone cleared and reopened, there is a subset that is concerned over things that you should never speculate about. Very concerned. This group will use virtually every power at their command to keep things hidden and quiet. And they have a whole lot of power… deadly power, Ajaya. You’re already on their radar. Retrieving that PC and sniping the Spider to save the Johnsons brought you clearly into their view. A person who can infiltrate any part of the Zone at will and retrieve almost any piece of information or data is a major threat. Why do you think you are working for me?”
“To keep me controlled and to monitor my Zone activity?”
He touched his nose with one finger, eyes super serious despite the funny gesture.
“Why didn’t they push to capture the Decimator? All they had to do was wait, or maybe even have you give the counter command?”
“First, the Patrol command has a whole protocol associated with it. Normally the command would be to Sweep, as in sweep the perimeter, or Recon, to explore a new area. Patrol turns it loose to follow its own inclinations for a short, but variable period of time. It wouldn’t listen to a counter command even from me, unless the person who ordered it to Patrol gave that command. Which is very specific—the word Recast. Tells it to return but still under its own autonomy. So if you
, the original issuer of the Patrol command, had been able to communicate the word Recast, it might have come back but would have observed the continued tension and probably evaded. Probably. I’m not certain because we’ve never used either command outside of the test area before.”
“You’ve given it way more leeway than I would have expected from the military,” I said.
“All relatively new. We’ve observed how much autonomy you give to your Berkut. These protocols are copied on that.”
“You sure it will come back?”
“Yes. Mostly. Say ninety-nine percent certain,” he said, then smiled. He constantly surprised me. Super-serious elite soldier one moment, joking the next, then charming my mom right after that. He was even more dangerous than first impressions, and first impressions were impressive.
“You should consider yourself under surveillance at all times, Ajaya,” he said, serious again.
“I’ve found bugs in our apartment. Thought they were yours,” I said.
“One was. If you found more, then there are others watching you. White and Black aren’t the most dangerous ones, either. And when I say danger, I mean to you, your family, and your friends.”
A sudden chill raced down my spine—a shudder at the thought of my sisters, my grandmother or mother or Astrid in the hands of people who had set up the drone strike on their own country. Or Harper… who would be dead instantly if they found her.
“Head for home, Ajaya. We’re done for the day, as I have to do what they expect or else I’ll be under suspicion… more suspicion. I was hoping we’d have more time with the Spider and get more information. But that’s life on the tip of the spear, right? Come back tomorrow. We’ll work on a new approach to the training. Oh and I’ll admit it… your guess was right. We need to show progress clearing at least part of the Zone, or other, more radical approaches might be implemented. The cost in soldiers would be high. I’m trying to avoid that.”
“Oh. You should have said something. I can get on board with that. I’ll work on ideas for teaching building clearing.”
“I didn’t want you knowing more than you had to. But I’ve got a feeling you know more than you should—a lot more.”
I just gave him my innocent look—eyes wide and surprised, hands out in a who me gesture.
“Yeah. Keep it like that. Now get the hell outta here,” he said, tired but clearly determined.
I hit the road, catching a ride off Roosevelt Island with one of the major’s team members. She dropped me off north of home—many, many blocks from home, but I wanted to take my time and think things through. So I walked for a while. I could call a car when I got tired of walking, but I needed to process what had just happened.
When I first met Yoshida, he’d been with Agents Black and White, as well as the head of Zone Defense, General Davis. I thought they were all on the same team. But Black and White wouldn’t be taking the Spider and all the geeks’ computer files about it if they were truly on Yoshida’s side. So factions, like the major had said. Harper’s mom had told me about the secret network of power players who had orchestrated Drone Night, using the national and global shock at the attack to destroy the world’s financial markets and then rebuild them, making themselves ungodly rich and the new masters of the universe at the same time.
Dr. Wilks had said that they were entrenched in finance, government, and the military complex. Yoshida had hinted at knowing about various competing factions within the government’s power structure. Dangerous ones. Maybe, just maybe, the unified group that had quietly and secretly overthrown the previous power structure was fracturing from within. Yoshida seemed to know about them, or at least hinted at something like them. But the knowledge of the modified Spiders was being hidden away. If I had done something that twisted and evil, I sure wouldn’t want anyone finding out about it.
I stopped into a noodle shop and got a to-go order of Pad Thai, figuring I’d walk and eat. Across the street, I noticed a news vehicle, the reporter and her technicians talking to what appeared to be a really angry woman. No, a really angry mother, one who kept pointing at her baby in its stroller and then back at the news crew. Then I saw one of the techs carrying a broken drone while the other one was picking up pieces of the drone off the ground—near the stroller. The traffic was too loud to hear much, but the mom was seriously pissed off. I caught a snippet: “…could have killed her…”
The reporter lady seemed upset, even as she tried to calm the mom. Something had gone wrong with the news drone and it had probably crashed near enough to the baby to first scare and then piss off the young mother.
I’m kind of hyper alert to drones—go figure. Sure, I know when I’m not in the Zone, and that the modern world uses drones for news, surveying, sightseeing, entertainment, and the delivery of everything from an online clothing order to tonight’s takeout. Crashes and crash-related injuries had been a thing back eight or so years ago, but the bugs had been worked out, especially in big cities. Most every kind of commercial and government drone had all kinds of backup software to prevent accidents like the kind that had just almost landed that baby in the hospital. So it was odd to see the aftermath firsthand, and also odd to recall the one news story I had heard during my siesta. Two different sets of commercial drones getting shacked up on the same day… seemed like a lot.
“AI, search for recent stories on drone-related accidents. Go back two weeks and filter out any experimental versions, new technologies, or obvious operator error. Create a new file titled Drones Amok.”
“Complying,” a voice said softly in my right ear.
I kept walking, moving south, paying attention to the activity around, looking for any other odd drone activity. Lots of drones but nothing out of the ordinary. At least at first. That’s probably how I spotted the ones following me, or maybe I should say why I spotted the ones following me.
There were two of them. Different models, nondescript, no attention-getting graphics or loud advertising. But newer. Commercial drones in the Big Apple get the shit kicked out of them during day-to-day use, and most businesses run them right down into the ground before replacing them.
So as I looked around, concentrating on the ubiquitous drones that filled modern life, two fairly new units lacking any marketing graphics caught my eye, just for a second. And then when I looked around again a few minutes later, they were still above and behind me. One was tiny, the size of a coffee mug, a mini quadcopter, all in white. The other was larger, a hexacopter, dull grey with a camera pod swiveling underneath.
The second time I spotted them, the little one shot across the street and up a side lane, while the big one stopped and hovered straight up, disappearing over a rooftop. The thing was that their cameras stayed pointed at me the whole time both drones were changing direction.
I ducked into a music shop and spent some time looking at guitars that I knew nothing about. The guy behind the counter asked me three times if I needed help. I left before he got to the fourth time. About fifteen minutes had elapsed, enough time for the drones to be long gone. Outside, there was no sign of them, so maybe I was just a little paranoid.
I called an Ublyft, watching the skies until car number 7659 pulled up and opened its door for me. Crawling in, I looked out all the windows as the vehicle pulled out into the city-AI-controlled traffic, but all I saw were the normal business drones of New York City going about their normal business.
Twenty minutes later, I was home, stepping out of the car and seeing nothing out of the ordinary. So yeah, maybe I’m a little paranoid. I’ve spent half my life in the Zone—sue me already.