Neural Web

by Dima Zales

I want to gasp for breath, but my body is breathing with the calm of a Hindu cow. I want to scream, but my mouth isn’t working.

  That flicker of an icon must’ve been the launch of an app that does the opposite of the Relief app: it causes lightning bolts to hit various parts of my brain.

  The pain stops and Kostya repeats, “How did Boris get hurt? Where did those drone pieces come from?”

  “Anyone ever tell you that you look like a syphilitic pedophile?” I say, my voice hoarse from residual pain. “You motherf—”

  The surge of agony is worse this time. It’s purer. Less reminiscent of anything physical. This is what it would feel like if a zombie munched your brain while you’re alive—if your brain had pain receptors, that is.

  After a subjective decade but probably a real-world second, the torment stops and Kostya repeats his questions.

  As tempted as I am to curse my half-brother again, the fear of that pain returning is so intense that I decide to stop being a hero. “You never said I couldn’t fly drones here. You just said to come alone.”

  He considers my words, and I inwardly brace for the pain to begin again.

  “He can’t command any drones now,” one of the lab coats says.

  “Still, I’m going to expedite the proceedings,” Kostya says to the coat. “Let’s go.”

  My body comes alive again, and I walk toward the room’s exit, passing a number of white hospital beds as I go. Kostya directs me into a wide corridor. A door to the right opens, and several masked guards bring out a stretcher carrying Boris. More guards follow with black garbage bags that probably contain broken glass and the remains of the drones.

  Kostya stops me next to the door the people just left.

  “You made my worst nightmare come true,” he says in an emotionless falsetto monotone. “I’m about to return the favor.”

  My attempt at a torrent of Russian and English obscenities doesn’t leave my uncooperative mouth.

  Kostya looks at me unblinkingly, and my perception momentarily flickers. When my vision reasserts itself, I realize he must’ve shut down my eyes, because I missed him move. And he must’ve moved, because he’s already a foot closer to the door.

  My arm rises, and Kostya hands me a Glock 19 just like the one I use at the range. There’s something ceremonial about this handoff, and if my body were still my own, I’d be gulping down breaths.

  Kostya walks through the door, and I unwillingly follow.

  Something about the room doesn’t fully make sense, but Kostya forces my eyes to dart from Ada to Alan—a rare case when his malevolent purpose is in sync with what I want to do anyway.

  Both Ada and Alan stare at me with paralyzed faces that hint at being under Kostya’s control.

  “Please, Dad, no,” Alan says with an intonation that makes him sound like a stranger—likely a side effect of Kostya using his vocal cords. “Don’t kill me.”

  “Do not shoot us, Mike,” Ada says in the same strange way, her face completely emotionless.

  My hand clutches the gun and rises.

  I try to scream, but no words come out.

  The barrel of my gun points at Ada’s head, and Kostya forces my eyes to look through the sights. All my shooting range experience leaves no doubt in my mind: if my finger presses that trigger, the bullet will hit my wife in the middle of her forehead.

  If it were possible for the naked brain to scream, mine would’ve done so already.

  Desperate ideas flit through my head.

  “This is a dream. Einstein, please show up.” The AI doesn’t appear, as he would if this was a nightmare.

  “Maybe this is a precog moment.” Then I remember that it can’t be. Precog moments disappeared with the newer brain boost technology, and even when they did happen in the past, they short-circuited as soon as you thought the words “precog moment.”

  My finger slowly presses the trigger.

  The gun’s recoil pushes my hand back as Ada’s head explodes.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  “This can’t be happening,” I chant inside my head. “Please, please, please. Let this not be happening.”

  “Daddy, don’t,” Alan says in that creepy way again.

  My arm points the gun unwaveringly at Alan’s tiny torso.

  I curse myself for wasting the drones on Boris earlier. I should’ve saved them to somehow kill myself—not that I have any app to control a drone with, but maybe Muhomor and Mitya could’ve done it.

  My finger squeezes the trigger.

  I’m oblivious to the ringing in my ears and the recoil. All I see is Alan’s small rib cage devastated by the bullet.

  With torturous intent, my eyes travel back to Ada’s corpse, forcing me to stare at my dead wife for what feels like an eternity of grief before coming back to Alan.

  I want to fall to my knees. I want to clutch my eyes. I want to rip out my hair. But my body just stands there.

  If human beings could will themselves to die of grief, I would do so now.

  Then my vision blurs once more, and I’m back outside the door.

  How am I back here? What just happened?

  Wild hope seizes me.

  Could that murder scene have been a precog moment, as unlikely as that is?

  Kostya is standing the same way he was before my vision went weird the first time. “I wanted to show you a preview of what’s about to happen,” he says. “I want you to know what I’m going to make you do in a minute, so you have a chance to really savor that experience.”

  I understand then. Kostya can run any app inside my AROS. That means he can force me to watch virtual reality videos, which is what that horrific vision was. That explains why I thought the room looked odd: there was no sign of Boris’s earlier struggle. When Kostya made that fake video, he didn’t know the incident with Boris would happen, so he didn’t stage it.

  In hindsight, it wasn’t even that good of a video. I’d thought Ada and Alan’s speech and facial expressions were weird because of Kostya’s control, but it was just unresearched CGI.

  “Here.” Kostya hands me the gun as though I have a choice.

  My hand extends and grasps it again, or for the first time—I don’t care about semantics right now.

  This time around, when I begin walking, I pay close attention to the most minute details to make sure I’m not in VR again. Given the pressure of the handle against my palm, the weight of the Glock pulling my arm down, and the faint smell of Boris’s blood and Kostya’s sweat, I must conclude that this is happening for real. VR technology doesn’t yet have this level of detail—although neither does a nightmare, for that matter.

  I appreciate Kostya’s evil genius at making me doubt reality right now. As the result of the earlier VR, I’m hyper alert. If he makes me repeat the atrocity from the fake video, I’ll feel every aspect even more vividly.

  My right leg takes a step. Again I focus and make sure to sense the pressure of my foot touching the ground, the interplay of leg muscles. It’s not only to verify the realness of what’s happening, but also to try to wrest back control. Maybe some leg muscle will listen to my brain and allow me to topple over. Maybe some muscle in my hand will twitch upon my wish and drop the gun.

  If Kostya’s control has a loophole, I don’t find it in the time it takes me to lumber into the room.

  This time, I spot the signs of Boris’s earlier mishaps: a window is missing, and glass crunches under my feet. Kostya makes me scan the room. There are two guards, one next to Ada and the other next to Alan. Kostya stops on my left, within easy reach—if only I could control my body.

  As in my earlier vision, Alan and Ada’s eyes are open. Unlike before, their expressions aren’t completely blank. There’s a nervous twitch in the corner of Ada’s eye, and something similar at the corner of Alan’s mouth.

  My left hand takes the gun off safety—another detail the VR video omitted earlier.

  My right hand fluctuates, as though Kostya is deciding whom he should have me sho
ot first.

  He must make his decision, because my hand turns in Alan’s direction.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Kostya is slowing my movements in order to torment me as much as he can. His plan is working extremely well.

  Then something penetrates his control.

  If I could blink in confusion, I would, because I don’t understand where this wave of groggy emotions comes from. Without a brain boost, it takes me a long moment to recognize what I’m experiencing.

  This is how Mr. Spock feels when you wake him from a rat nap.

  Has Kostya forgotten to stop the EmoRat app?

  Now that I think about it, it’s likely. Only Ada, Alan, and I are users of this app. Kostya or anyone outside our circle wouldn’t even know it was there to stop.

  “Buddy!” I shout urgently through the app. “I think you got hit on the head and knocked out, and you just came back to your senses.”

  “Sounds true,” the rat replies. His mind is clearly groggy. “Your friend is in my head.”

  “What?” I ask with a glimmer of hope. “Muhomor…? Mitya? Can you—?”

  “Already on top of it,” says Mr. Spock with unusual sophistication. “This is Muhomor, by the way.”

  “Dude.” I cram my reply with all the desperation of a man whose hand is in the process of aiming a gun at his son. “Please tell me Mitya’s debug mode worked.”

  “Yeah, once I knew how they got in, it wasn’t hard to reverse engineer the rest of it—especially since fate was kind enough to provide me with a Georgian test subject right here in the bunker.” Muhomor’s Zik reply contains an inappropriate amount of glee. “Ada and Alan are already free from control, by the way. They’re just faking submission. Things are trickier with you because I’ve had no way to get in touch until now. I have to say, I always thought your pet rat was a stupid frivolity, but now that I can use him as a proxy for—”

  “Can you see the room?” I interrupt. “The gun is almost pointing at Alan’s head.”

  “True,” Muhomor says. “That’s where we want it. Until the last second. We don’t want them on to us.”

  “This is the last second.” Though my mind isn’t nearly as sharp as it needs to be, I understand his plan—but I’m so pissed that if this conversation were happening in VR, I’d punch him in the face. “Free me. Now.”

  “Not yet. Kostya is paying close attention to you right now. If I wrest his control away, he’ll instantly know that it happened. In case you hadn’t noticed, there are armed people in the room.”

  “If you don’t give me back control of my body, I will genuinely kill you when I see you next.” I cram my hatred of my half-brother into my Zik message with the hope of getting through.

  “Fine,” Muhomor snaps. “Let’s see if this works.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  My mind becomes whole again.

  No drug-induced ecstasy or the best orgasm in the world can compare with the sensation of regaining my full mental prowess. If someone magically turned an ant into a rocket scientist, this is how the little creature would feel.

  Seeing simultaneously through my own eyes and Mr. Spock’s viewpoint, I reassess the situation. It was a mistake to force Muhomor to give me control back at this very moment. Kostya is indeed about to become aware of what’s happening—a few milliseconds too soon. Now I’m pissed that Muhomor gave in, but I have no choice but to work with the situation at hand. If I ever not have my brain boost again, I hope I retain enough wits to unquestioningly trust someone whose intellect (at that time) is so much superior to mine.

  On the bright side, Mitya and Muhomor don’t know the full extent of my combat skills. Hopefully, I can still get us out of this mess alive.

  Instead of continuing the trajectory that would point the gun at Alan’s head, my hand shifts an inch to the side, and I put a bullet between the eyeholes of the Richard Nixon mask of Alan’s guard.

  The mask breaks into little pieces, as does the skull of the man underneath.

  I feel a tinge of regret at the death—an obvious side effect of having my mind Joined with Ada’s so recently. Any police manual would advise lethal force in a situation like this. Shooting to kill is the safest option under the circumstances. I took unnecessary risks in the past by shooting people in the shoulder; now that I’m more experienced, I refuse to risk my family’s life for some asshole again. If that makes me too much like Joe, it’s something I’ll have to live with—and I’d rather live to regret my choices than die as a saint.

  In less time than it probably takes Kostya to register the boom of the gunshot, I elbow him in the stomach while pointing the gun toward Ada’s guard with my other hand. Most people have trouble moving their hands completely independently like this; they first realize it in grade school when attempting the trick of patting their head and rubbing their belly at the same time. Of course, just like with that trick, practice helps tremendously.

  My elbow connects pleasantly with Kostya’s flesh at the same time as my right index finger presses the trigger.

  The second gunshot thunders, and the second guard’s brains splatter the wall behind him with streaks of brown and red, like the bloody stool of a cow suffering from dysentery. It’s fitting, I think. The guard clearly had shit for brains.

  Kostya doubles over in pain. I turn to him now, fury shading the blue lines of Battle Mode in red.

  I raise the gun to his head, and my finger itches to do what Joe would’ve done in my place—end my half-brother, here and now. Yet a part of me wavers. I’m not sure if it’s Ada’s influence, my kinship with my target, or my seeing that he’s no longer a threat.

  Also, Alan and Ada are watching me.

  To quell the bloodthirstiness that threatens to make me press the trigger anyway, I remind myself that Kostya could be useful as a hostage. Even Joe would consider that a reason to let him live.

  Instead of firing, I pistol-whip Kostya in the face with all my might. There’s a crack of something breaking, and my half-brother falls to the ground in a limp heap.

  Ada and Alan are staring at me in shock. If we had a family competition to see whose eyes could grow wider, I’m not sure who would win.

  “React in VR,” I tell them both via Zik messages. “We don’t have time for that in the real world.”

  Hopeful they’ll agree, I pop into VR and leap into action in the real world. My first objective is to grab Mr. Spock from his hiding spot.

  I arrive in the VR meeting room in time to catch Ada screaming like a banshee. She’s madly pacing the room’s circumference, and I give her space to finish a few circles before I attempt any consolation. Alan is faring a little better, or so I assume. The kid is sitting at the conference table, face down, arms hugging the top of his head as though he’s blocking punches.

  After a couple of circles, I grab Ada into a bear hug. She resists for a moment, then softens into me.

  Muhomor and Mitya look extremely uncomfortable, while Dominic seems eager to break something or someone.

  “We’re okay,” I say soothingly to no one specific. I gently release Ada and make my way toward Alan. “We’re going to be okay.”

  “Those five hundred guards swooping to your location might disagree.” Muhomor pushes his sunglasses higher up his nose. “You’re far from okay.”

  I’m hugging Alan when I hear a solid thump behind me.

  Muhomor angrily yelps, “That’s classic. Shoot the messenger.”

  “Sorry,” Dominic says. “All that adrenaline.”

  Ada’s comforting hands slide around my shoulders. I think she wants her turn to hug our son, so I move away.

  “Mike had a good idea earlier,” Mitya says with urgency. “Go to the lab to rejoin Joe. Once there, try to barricade yourselves in. The robots will arrive in about twenty minutes, so hopefully you can hold out until then. Dominic should be there around the same time.”

  I can tell Muhomor wants to say something, but he sees my expression and holds his tongue. Besides
, I know what he’s about to say because I’m thinking the same thing: what kind of a barricade can withstand such an overwhelming force?

  “We’re going,” I say nonetheless. “Ada, Alan, can you guys move?”

  Ada’s chin is still quivering, but she nods.

  “Think you can look after Alan?” I ask. “My hands will be full.”

  “Of course,” she says. “I’ll carry him.”

  “I can walk,” Alan says in a barely audible whisper. “I’m too heavy for you.”

  “You only weigh thirty-five pounds,” she says, her voice already steadier. “If the lab isn’t far, I can carry you.”

  “No, seriously.” Alan’s voice sounds healthier, and I wonder if Ada’s using her mom reverse-psychology Jedi mind tricks on him. “I can walk.”

  “While we move, I have a task for you two,” I tell Mitya and Muhomor.

  “A diversion?” Mitya asks.

  “A very specific one,” I say. “You now have the backdoor into the Brainocytes of the entire human population.”

  Muhomor’s eyes light up—he sees where my mind is going. “Including the assholes at your location.”

  “Exactly,” I say. “I want to get inside the heads of all the guards in this place and—”

  “We don’t have their Brainocyte IDs,” Mitya interrupts.

  “We don’t need them if we create a proximity-based virus,” Muhomor says. I notice he’s VR-magicked himself a new pair of sunglasses. “Mike here can be our ground zero. Anyone within a mile of him will get the Payload app, which will activate instantly thanks to the nature of the backdoor.”

  “I wish I had time to design a virtual hell to trap these fuckers in,” Alan mutters through his teeth with unusual viciousness.

  “Language,” I say on autopilot. Ada rewards me with a small smile.

  “So when I get there, I’ll get this virus also?” Dominic asks worriedly. The idea of spending time in a virtual hell of Alan’s creation doesn’t seem to appeal to him, and I can’t blame him.

  “We’ll obviously use a harmless app whose main purpose will be to distract its victim,” I say. “Anyone besides Alan have an app in mind?”