by Ran Vant
He said he could make it happen.
86.
Final Inspection
Felix mindlessly manipulated the terminal screen. With everything happening, all of the pieces coming together and in need of coordination, it seemed foolish to continue his above ground work. Every moment at the terminal screen felt like an eon. Every moment was precious. Katz was usually a patient person, but there was so much work to be done. And time was running out. Yet part of him knew General Win was right: if something should go wrong, as it had so many times before, the Organization would still need its people in place, and some of them might need to disappear into the crowds of daily life for a long time, once again. So Katz sat at his terminal, continuing to play the role of taciturn but extremely competent engineer.
When Doctor Psycho was assassinated, Felix had asked Colonel Blue for access to a full anti-poison compound regime, prophylactic, in the bloodstream from the get-go. He didn’t want to depend solely on the bio-watch. Colonel Blue hadn’t recommended it, saying the probability of an attack on Colonel Red was low and the negative side effects of having the compound in his blood for extended periods of time were well known. Dr. X had concurred. Felix did not trust Dr. X the way he trusted Doctor Psycho, but the good Doctor was gone. While denying Red’s request for the regime, Dr. X added it was impossible to protect against every conceivable poison. Felix couldn't have all of those compounds running around his bloodstream for any length of time without serious health complications. Besides, Dr. X pointed out, the autopsy showed that the bio-watch worked and that Doctor Psycho had managed to survive the poison attack. So, Colonel Blue and Dr. X told him not to take the extra anti-poisons. Felix had a medical tech issue him them anyway without entering it in the system and had taken the compounds every four hours. Without telling the others.
The clock turned over to noon, and Felix got up. It was time for lunch. Or, in Red’s case, it was time to get in an hour of real work. He wanted to get a firsthand look at one of the operational areas as it looked from the surface. A leisurely walk over lunch would allow him to casually survey the area one last time. Experience had taught that sometimes his eyes would pick up on something that, despite all of their technology, others had missed. And there was no room for error.
Felix emerged from the tower and stared up through the canyon of glass. Today it was hanging there, low in the sky. The floater was watching them. All the gens in the sky would see, however, was a trud engineer on his lunch break going for a walk.
**
Felix studied the buildings. Everything still looked in order. The sites would probably work. The buildings were mostly unoccupied. The windows were wide-enough with only lightly traveled streets below. The urban canyons formed in the surrounding streets would aid in concealing the deliveries. Yet there was enough space to have a clear shot at it. Yes, this site would work.
Felix continued walking down the block and turned onto a cross street. He knew the tunnels were underneath him here. The tunnels were large and meters under the concrete. But they would be shallow enough for his purposes.
**
Felix had seen enough for his final in-person inspection. The sites still looked workable. Good, even. Now they needed to get the final pieces of equipment positioned. And Niles needed to stop dragging the Network's feet.
Katz needed to get back to the office. He could work through the issues with the scarred one while sitting in front of his terminal. He picked up his pace.
Then he felt it.
It felt like a sting on his neck, like the sting of a wasp. He raised his hand to the back of his neck and used his fingernail to scrape out the micro-dart. He knew exactly what it was.
Felix slowly turned around, and saw the round-faced woman tucked into an alcove, her eyes growing a little wider. Now he knew who had fired it at him. Felix smiled broadly for a second. Then he charged at her.
The woman turned and disappeared into the building, but Felix was not far behind. He burst through the door to see another door at the end of a short hallway clicking shut. Felix sprinted down the hallway and crashed through the door, finding himself in the atrium of one of the medium sized towers he had probably helped design.
The woman was three-quarters of the way across the open, high-ceilinged area and headed for the revolving doors that led to the well-traveled city street beyond. Felix was impressed with her speed given that she looked to be a middle-aged woman. Felix was no spring chicken himself, and unfortunately for times such as this, he spent more time developing his mind than his body. Still, he had some reserve of natural talent and a bursting reservoir of motivation, and he was closing the gap.
He slammed through the revolving door and charged up the street towards the fleeing assassin. Suddenly, she turned around and fired two micro-darts at him in rapid succession. Felix reflexively ducked. One of the darts went wide and struck a pedestrian, who stumbled and fell unconscious to the pavement.
“Don't take the anti-poison compounds, they're bad for your health... yeah... great advice, team. Great advice,” Felix muttered. Felix continued his charge as the woman turned to resume her flight. She took a sharp corner at the next side street, and Felix wondered if she might not be doubling back to where their little chase began.
He rounded the corner and an energy blast whizzed by his ear. She must have retrieved a stashed weapon or an accomplice was now assisting her. Felix didn’t stick around to investigate. The cat had once again become the mouse.
He was already back on the main street, weaving through the crowd. He ducked into one of the towers of steel and glass, and worked his way to the pedestrian tunnel subsystem. After ten minutes more of doubling back and evasive maneuvers, he was sure he was not being followed any longer. Felix, in an abundance of caution, headed for one of the safe house locations, one not known by others in the Organization except the late Doctor Psycho and a few others who he trusted absolutely. He was upset that she had gotten away, but thankful that he had managed to survive. It was probably foolish of him to pursue her from the start.
On his way to the safe house, he looked up at the little domes that dotted the street and contained surveillance cameras for the local police force. Thankfully, the Organization had access to the same camera feeds. “You may have lost me,” Felix thought to himself, “but in the process you’ve lost your anonymity.” She had escaped, but that would only be temporary.
**
Felix weaved his way back through the city. When he finally reached the safe house, he picked up the communicator.
“Hello, this is Storberg, structural engineers. How may I direct your call?” the female receptionist asked.
“Oh, hi Rachel,” Katz responded. “This is Felix. Um, I must have eaten something bad at lunch or something. I’m having a reaction again and I’m really not feeling well. I think I need to take the afternoon off.”
“Oh, sick again, Felix?” Rachel said, with concern in her voice. She knew he had a few health issues. The boss seemed to always understand, because he never got angry at Felix's frequent absences due to health problems. “I’ll let Jonathan know. You just take it easy and we’ll see you maybe tomorrow, okay?” she said in her motherly tone.
“Thanks, Rachel. We’ll see how I’m feeling.” Felix placed the communicator back on the table. He had a feeling it would be a long time before he was feeling well enough to go back to the office. By that time, he wondered if there would be an office to go back to.
87.
Minds Alive
Niles always seemed to try to conceal his emotions. But it was clear to Damien that in this instance Niles looked a little excited. “So, Damien. You retrieved the Greendust.”
“It was where you said it would be, when you said it would be there,” Damien said. “The rest wasn't hard.”
“Indeed, not for you. Not anymore.”
“The rest will be easier now, too. Now that we have the Greendust.”
“We shall see,” Niles said.
“I hope so.”
“You shall.”
“I can't wait,” Damien said, eager to see the technology in action against the gens.
“You don't need to wait, Damien.”
Damien looked at Niles, puzzled, but by now knowing that the scarred one had something in mind.
“Your body is so much more powerful now than before,” Niles explained. “But that is only a taste. For there is something more powerful than the body, and that is the mind. It is the mind that controls the body.”
Niles picked up a vial of the Greendust. “We shall see if this metallic powder will make our mission easier, and we shall see it now. For we will finally see the truth. We will see if it is as you have said. For if this is Greendust, we cannot be stopped.”
Damien obliged Niles by asking the obvious. “How?”
“Your mind could join ours and then you would understand.”
“Plugging in?”
“Just a taste, Damien. Just a taste.” He walked Damien over to a padded chair and invited him to sit in it. Damien did so.
“Now, close your eyes and relax. Soon you will understand.”
Damien relaxed. At first, he saw merely the darkness that came with closing his eyes. But then the blackness began to swirl ever so slightly, with hints of blue dancing across the blackness. Then he saw an image of a city burning and felt the pain of loss. Then he felt the heat on his face. The images came faster. Soon, it was not just images, but words. And out of those words, thoughts. And from those thoughts, visions... of what was, of what is, of what might be.
Then he saw a hidden manufacturing facility that he intuitively knew to be the Network's. And in his mind's eye, he saw the Dreptex. There was more of the killing compound than Niles had hinted at. Much more. And Damien knew it was not a vision of what might be, but of what is, of what Niles had seen with his own eyes.
Then Damien felt Nile's thoughts. There was almost enough Dreptex to wipe out the world. And with the Greendust to bond with it and help it spread, there was no doubt it was enough to destroy the gens... and more.
Then the thoughts seemed more real. It was now as if he were living them. He was not just watching now, but experiencing. He saw Niles – was it Niles or someone before Niles? – growing up in the east, in a time Damien did not understand... he saw the horror of the Conflict, the pain, the senseless death, people killing people... he saw how that mind swore to defeat them, using anything and everything he could... he felt the anger and determination... and he saw the plan. The Network would destroy the gens with the Dreptex... and more. Something deadlier. Something that would kill all of the gens... and almost all of the truds. But Damien saw the logic of it. The Network would cut away everything, it would destroy the world as they knew it. It would even destroy the Network itself. But a few humans, a few true humans, would survive and the gen threat would be gone forever. Humanity would rebuild itself, safe for thousands of years from the threat of modology. And the Greendust would make it all the more possible.
Damien continued to swim in the logic and thoughts of Niles. But soon, he realized it was not just Niles. There was another mind there, too. And slowly it dawned on him that there was not just one other mind, but two... three... dozens. All of the minds layered over one another... The thoughts washed over him stronger now. They began to crush him, he could not breathe, he could not comprehend it all, it was too much... the pain, the love, the thinking-
“Ah!” Damien grunted as his eyes opened.
“That is enough for now,” Niles said. “Everything is as you have told us.”
Niles comprehended everything. Now, the Network knew everything about Damein. Damien only saw a small part, what one mind unaccustomed to the Network could tolerate. But the Network, dozens of minds experienced in the task, had seen everything in Damien's mind, conscious and unconscious. They saw it all, as if they had lived it. They had seen Damien grow up, when he fell in love, when she was killed, when he first discovered the Greendust hidden deep in the tunnels, when he first used the Greendust to steal the True Core's database, when he had failed with the others to catch the first Guardian of the West, when he was in the submersible and finally caught the Guardian, when Red assigned him to ensure the technology was ready for the Event, when Damien first met Niles, when he began to believe that he must act with everything in his power, the pain of the auto-shotgun ripping apart his body, the feeling of power at his new mechanical body and the surprise that he enjoyed it, and finally the Greendust in his hands...
Niles saw that and more. And he smiled through his scars. The Greendust was real. Damien had not deceived them. No one could construct an entire life of lies in the mind.
The pain and confusion of the mind meld had gone, but as if it was a drug, Damien suddenly wanted more. He had only a small taste of dozens of minds in harmony, and now his head felt empty, alone. He now understood there were so many ways to see, so many ways to comprehend, and they could be unified. “I want to know more,” Damien said.
“We all do,” Niles replied.
But of all the thoughts Damien saw, that he experienced, one jumped to the forefront: “The Greendust...”
“Yes,” the scarred one smiled. Niles knew now what he had previously suspected and hoped was true. Niles had confirmation that the Greendust was the real thing, discovered years ago in the tunnels, discovered by Damien. Niles had had to wait for certainty, he had to know it wasn't a trick, and now he had it.
Niles also fully comprehended what Damien was only now realizing. Niles sensed it, knew how Damien thought, knew what Damien had glimpsed in the visions. “Yes, Damien. It is living. The Greendust can accomplish more than you could have possibly imagined. What before was a hope is now a certainty.”
Niles took one of the Greendust vials. “We thought it was all gone forever. We thought that no one else could follow in the path that those gens walked so long ago...”
He unscrewed the vial.
“Now, it belongs to us, too...”
Niles placed his nose over the vial and inhaled deeply. He closed his eyes, pointing his face towards the sky.
The fools of the Natural Human Alliance. All this time the Greendust was under their noses, and they didn't know what it truly was. Only a dispersion agent! They didn't understand how it worked. It could disperse because it could think. It knew what its master wanted it to do. They didn't understand that it was living, that it was power, that it was modology.
**
Damien knew now that the Network would destroy everything with the Greendust. The counter-Event wouldn't be limited. It would wipe out almost everyone. And Damien was fine with that. No, not just Damien: THEY were fine with that.
88.
Compartmentalization Countdown
General Win was talking over the secure connection. The encryption and decryption process made it impossible to recognize his voice, but the code words had confirmed it was Win. “Colonel Red flushed her out, chasing her long enough that a dozen cameras got good shots. The upside is that this assassin's days are clearly numbered. It won't take us long to find her and, one hopes, figure out who is behind these killings. Unfortunately, Colonel Red’s cover is also likely in serious jeopardy. He may have to go underground full time.”
The incident with the assassin meant that Engineer Katz would need to be sick as far as his company was concerned, though the charade could only last so long. It was likely that Engineer Katz would never return. Still, if his identity was not leaked too far and wide and if the assassin ring could be uncovered and neutralized, it was not impossible to imagine that one day Katz would be able to resume his cover as an engineer. Not impossible, but highly unlikely. If he ever worked “in the light” again, it would probably be under a new alias in a new city.
Strangely, to some, Red didn't appear to care about losing his cover. He hadn't planned on needing it much longer anyway.
Red focused his attention again on the General’s address. General Win wa
s concerned about the assassinations, for obvious reasons. “As a result of recent events, I’m issuing a Delta Class compartmentalization order. Physical and operational segmentation is imperative. Violations of the Delta order will be dealt with severely. We are too close to the end game for these kinds of problems.”
Colonel Red understood. It was not an unwise order. It could even be argued that it should have been ordered after Doctor Psycho was murdered, if not at the start of the whole project. But this order complicated Felix’s own plans. Nevertheless, it could be done.
General Win was finishing up his address. “The source confirms the Event is still on target. There is no indication of an accelerated execution date. Therefore, we will continue, methodically, with our plans. Despite the setbacks and the loss of the Doctor, our operational goals can still be met. I know you can make it happen. That is all.”
General Win’s voice cut out as the transmission came to an end. Colonel Red sighed. One more week before the operation. One more week, and it would be finished.
89.
The Bell Rang
The doorbell rang and her heart jumped. Though she didn’t want to, she went to the door and opened it anyway.
A man stood there, about six feet tall, slim but muscular build, square jaw, black business clothes, red tie. It was a face she had known long ago, but one she had not seen in what seemed like a lifetime. He was carrying a single red rose. His hair was slicked back except for a single lock of long gray hair that hung out over his forehead.
“Hello, Flora,” the silver-haired man said.