Neural Web

by Dima Zales

  “I do.” Some mischief returns to Ada’s amber eyes. “How about the Join app?”

  “That’ll certainly distract them.” I put my hand on her shoulder and give it a reassuring squeeze.

  “What app?” Mitya and Muhomor ask in unison.

  “I never submitted it to source control,” Ada says apologetically. “I’ll send you the code now. You can figure it out from there.”

  Though Ada, Alan, and I don’t leave VR, we refocus on the real world. My wife grabs my son (of course she won that argument), and I put Mr. Spock in my pocket. I tell Ada and Alan to wait in the back of the room, reload my Glock with the bullets I found in a clip inside Kostya’s back pocket, and open the door.

  The two guards in the corridor each get a bullet to the head before they can raise their weapons.

  I return to the room, reload again, and grab Kostya by one leg so I can drag him.

  “Stay behind me,” I say in a telepathic message once I’m in the corridor again.

  Ada nods in VR and follows with heavy footsteps.

  “You’re barely walking,” Alan complains. “Put me down.”

  Ada ignores Alan’s plea, and I debate taking the kid from her; she’s tiny herself, and our son is heavy for her small frame. But before I can intervene, she relents and sets him on the floor. All signs of fear are gone from my son’s face, and I suspect I was right earlier about Ada’s mind tricks.

  Dragging my half-brother behind me like a sack of potatoes, I continue down the corridor. Ada follows with Alan behind her. I step over the bodies of the dead guards, taking sadistic pleasure in Kostya’s head banging against the floor as I drag him over the grisly obstacles.

  When I reach the door to the lab, I make eye contact with Ada and put a finger to my lips. She nods gravely, kneels next to Alan, and hugs him protectively.

  With a powerful kick, I take care of the lab door, and as soon as it swings in, I scan the space for targets. Two guards raise their guns in my direction while the white lab coat guys from earlier look on in horrified fascination.

  I shoot the two guards without hesitation.

  “Now.” I address the rightmost lab coat guy, whose face is whiter than his clothes. “The person who tells me the Wi-Fi password gets to live.”

  The men glance at each other and begin shouting all at once, though the guy I singled out is the loudest.

  Since I’m now recording every second of my life, I play back the cacophony of words and easily decouple the password. They’ve all given me the same string of digits and numbers. After a few moments of mental fumbling, I’m into the mansion’s ultra-secure network.

  I pass the log-in credentials to the VR room. “Go to town.” I debate teasing Muhomor about being the one to get the password but decide to let him focus on the virus app.

  It takes only a fraction of a moment to take control of the nearby cameras. Ada and Alan both look tense as they wait outside the room, but the good news is that I see no danger creeping up behind them.

  “Another chance to live,” I tell my captive audience. “Who has those nifty syringes that knock people out?”

  Every hand goes up, and they pretty much all yell their version of, “Yes, me, pick me and kill the others.”

  “Inject yourselves with the syringes,” I say. “Anyone not unconscious via the drug will be made permanently unconscious via a bullet to the head.”

  The lab coats must think there’s a competitive component to this injection command, because they race to avoid being the last man standing.

  I let go of Kostya and enter the room.

  Methodically, I give each seemingly unconscious man a strong kick to the head. If anyone’s injected themselves with something other than a knockout drug, they’ll give themselves away by grunting in pain. No one makes a peep. I guess they weren’t faking. They’ll have horrible headaches upon waking, but that’s the least I could do as payback for their part in taking over my mind.

  Returning to the doorway, I grab Kostya by the leg and drag him into the room.

  “The room’s clear,” I tell Ada after another quick scan.

  She walks in after me, and Alan follows her warily. They both pretend not to see the bodies of the dead guards, and I’m grateful for their charade.

  I dump Kostya’s limp body on one of the hospital beds nearest the door. Boris’s unconscious form is taking up the bed on the opposite side, and Joe is lying on an adjacent bed.

  “Joe,” I say out loud. “Can you hear me?”

  “We freed him from the mind control,” Mitya tells me preemptively. “He must still be out, though.”

  I check the monitors hooked up to Joe and exhale in relief. His vitals are good—much better than Boris’s arrhythmic heartbeat.

  “I’m going to barricade the door we came through.” I head back, looking for a piece of furniture that would best do the job. Through the lab’s security camera, I spot Ada searching for heavy objects to place next to the other door.

  Alan turns from my cousin, worry contorting his small face. “We have to summon an ambulance,” he says in VR. “Uncle Joe needs urgent medical attention.”

  “A helicopter is flying in,” Mitya says. “Should be there in twenty minutes or so.”

  “Make sure they—”

  I don’t hear what Alan says, because I spot a flurry of movement from the bed on Joe’s right—a bed I assumed to be as empty as the other ones.

  A skeletally thin figure is hiding under the sheet.

  A female figure.

  I begin turning back, gun already in my hand and the Battle Mode and aim assist apps ready. But by the time I make a quarter turn, the woman is holding my son like a human shield.

  Through the camera in the back of the room, I see her emaciated hand press a small-caliber pistol to Alan’s temple.

  “Drop your gun, or I’ll shoot the little bastard,” she says in an eerily familiar voice. “Do it now.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  “That voice reminds me of how everyone under control spoke,” Mitya says, sounding horrified.

  He’s right. All the mind-control victims we heard spoke in that specific, high-pitched voice. And because they all happened to be male, their voices sounded falsetto—but it must be that this woman’s vocal cords are the basis for that strange register.

  Then I realize that even Kostya spoke in this way. Could my half-brother have been another victim? Has everyone been under her mind control all this time?

  Still looking through the camera, I’m not surprised to recognize her face, though I still run the face recognition to confirm the bad news.

  There’s no denying it.

  This is Masha.

  “My literally crazy half-sister has Alan,” I say to everyone, in case they haven’t figured this out already. “I don’t know what to do.”

  I push Battle Mode to its limits, but neither it nor my own experience with violence show me a way to disable Masha without Alan getting hurt.

  I demonstratively drop my gun and stop turning.

  “Turn toward me,” Masha orders. “Slowly.”

  I complete my rotation, and she peeks over Alan’s shoulder. I stare into those eyes—the eyes that remind me of what mine would look like if I hadn’t slept for a year.

  Through the camera, I see Ada grab the inert Kostya by the throat. “If you don’t let go of my son, your brother is as good as dead,” she threatens loudly.

  I’m not sure Ada has enough strength to choke a grown man, plus I know how she feels about violence and murder. Then again, who knows what a mother, even one as peaceful as my wife, might do to save her child?

  Masha’s expression doesn’t change. “You already killed poor Kostya,” she says, and I realize her mind is damaged beyond repair. “I can’t guide him anymore.”

  “Guide him,” Muhomor says. “That’s a nice euphemism. I don’t need to be a shrink to confirm her diagnosis.”

  “I agree,” Mitya says. “She just admitted she was contr
olling her brother. When Mike knocked him out, she saw it as a disconnect in her controller app—so she probably really believes he’s dead.”

  “Masha,” I say as soothingly as my nerves allow. “Kostya is just unconscious.”

  “I don’t care what happens to Kostya.” She shoves the gun harder against Alan’s temple, making him wince. “He put me into Serbsky Asylum. He tried to take over my brain. I only suffered him to live to use his resources to get to you.”

  “She sounds convinced of what she’s saying,” Dominic says worriedly. “The brother leverage isn’t going to work.”

  “Look, Masha.” I apply all the power of my enhanced cognition to search for a way out of the situation. “You took Kostya over and made him do your bidding. He’s suffered enough. So have we. Let’s just stop this.”

  “Muhomor,” I shout in VR. “I want you to unleash that distraction now.”

  “I’m still making sure the virus is safe for releasing into the wild,” Muhomor replies. “Besides, I bet it won’t affect her—she’ll have closed that GPS backdoor into her Brainocytes as soon as she could.”

  “Alan is an innocent,” Ada says in the real world, her hands leaving Kostya’s neck. “And he’s your family.”

  “He has your husband’s tainted blood.” Masha glares at me with pure hatred. “This is for my father,” she adds—and blood leaves my face as her finger starts to squeeze the trigger.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  As Masha’s finger continues its deadly arc, her jaw muscles tighten and she leans away from her target, as though worried about the blood that will splatter her in a moment. My mind is sifting through an infinitude of flawed actions I can take, but none of them will save Alan or improve his chances.

  Ada’s eyes are wide with horror. She must also see the inevitability of Masha’s actions.

  A burst of motion explodes right behind Masha.

  One moment, Joe was lying unconscious on the hospital bed; the next, he’s on his feet wielding a scalpel. In a blur of violence, he slashes at Masha’s gun hand. The scalpel goes through her fingers like a warm spoon through half-melted ice cream.

  As the gun clanks to the floor, her scream turns into a dreadful gargling sound.

  Joe just sliced her throat.

  “Incoming,” Dominic announces urgently in VR. “Has anyone been scanning through the cameras?”

  I frantically consult the camera that monitors the lab’s second exit and see five masked guards approaching.

  I reach down to grab my gun and roll over the nearest table to hide us. Ada snatches a gun from one of the dead guards and throws it to Joe. He catches it, but I can tell he’s weak. Dealing with Masha must’ve taken all the energy he had.

  “Muhomor,” I shout in VR. “Are you ready with the fucking distraction now?”

  “I’m not sure if—”

  “You told me you used something you made for the government as a basis,” Mitya says. “Wasn’t it safe to start with?”

  “If it was, I wouldn’t need to further secure it, would I?” Muhomor retorts. “Fine, fine, give me another minute.”

  “Ada, Alan—on the floor,” I scream in every mode of communication I can access.

  The door swings open, and the first Nixon-masked guy appears. Spotting Joe, he shoots. I shoot back at exactly the same time.

  Joe is lucky Boris is in the bed next to him. The bullet meant for Joe hits Boris, and the asshole’s heart monitor goes berserk.

  Joe’s shooter is down. Although I didn’t even get a chance to aim, I got him smack in the brain. Joe shoots the second guard in the chest, and as soon as the man topples over, I put a bullet in the head of the guard behind him.

  A bullet whooshes by my shoulder, and Joe fires two more times.

  Two more bodies hit the floor, and the room goes quiet. The only audible thing is the equipment beeping about Boris’s lack of heartbeat.

  “Ten more in the corridor,” Dominic reports in the VR room. “If you can hold out another ten minutes, I’ll be there.”

  “So will the robots, and the cops after that,” Mitya says.

  “They won’t survive long enough.” Muhomor puts up a giant mosaic of camera views, most of them showing people with guns running toward the lab. “I want the record to show that I don’t have a choice but to unleash the virus now.”

  “Just do it already,” Dominic says.

  All eyes in VR are on Muhomor, but his face grows thoughtful. “Just a few more seconds.”

  Dominic unleashes a growling sigh. “I just want to make sure I understand what’s about to happen. Ada wrote a trippy app that cross-wires people’s minds, and you’re about to wrap it in a virus and use the GPS backdoor to force it into the minds of anyone within a mile of Mike?”

  “That pretty much sums it up.” Ada chews on her lip as she stares at a screen showing a huge crowd of guards moving ever closer.

  “What I don’t get is why that app?” Dominic asks. I suspect he’s trying to keep Ada from panicking about the oncoming danger. “Why not take control of your attackers the way Kostya did?”

  “Even if that weren’t an ethical abomination,” Mitya says, “we simply don’t have an app for that.” He looks at Muhomor, his eyes narrowing.

  If any one of us had an app like that, it would be Muhomor.

  “I don’t have anything of the sort,” Muhomor says, looking offended.

  “But surely there are better distraction apps that are possible?” Dominic asks.

  “I doubt it,” Ada says. “Besides, I’m hoping that seeing through our eyes and experiencing our memories, hopes, and fears will turn some of these men away from violence against us. It’s hard to harm people you get to know so intimately.”

  “She has a point,” I say, thinking back to our Joining. “Though this is all academic, because we’re about to die. I don’t have enough bullets for the next wave of guards.”

  “Fine, just shut up already,” Muhomor says.

  An icon shows up in my AROS interface in that eerie way Kostya and Masha placed them there before.

  “Alan, Joe,” I whisper as the app launches. “Prepare for a wild ride.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Just like the previous time, the Join app puts all my senses into a blender and presses the “Crush Ice” button. The intensity is much greater than my Joining with Ada, which makes sense since I’m sensing through multiples of sensory organs. The exact number of people now participating is hard to discern; it’s an ever-growing target. Each of the people I’m linked with are experiencing the same thing I am, and that creates a downward spiral of cross sensations until we all begin to lose ourselves in this experience.

  There’s a duality to my consciousness in this sensory Armageddon. The boundaries between me and countless people disappear, yet I still feel that I’m my individual self.

  A part of me can still see what’s happening in the cameras. The men in the view are ripping off their Richard Nixon masks in confusion. Their guns are on the floor, and they’re staring around and sniffing the air as if they’re experiencing the world for the very first time—which isn’t unlike how I feel as well. The thoughts of the guards seep into my mind and vice versa, and I realize this experience is infinitely more intense for them because they aren’t comfortable being in many places at once, unlike Tier I minds like me.

  I feel vividly alive and completely immersed in the present moment. Freedom and contentment spread through our Joined minds.

  “Well, I’ve never seen a better distraction,” Mitya says from someplace. “I’m jealous I’m not running this app myself.”

  Mitya’s words pull me out of the experience enough to realize that something is going awry. I’m seeing the world from the eyes of a helicopter pilot—a pilot who’s lucky he put his flying vehicle under Einstein’s control today.

  “Shit,” Muhomor says from the same distant place where I heard Mitya. “The news helicopter got there too soon. They’re going to spread the vi
rus outside the necessary range. You guys didn’t give me time to put the proper precautions in place.”

  “I thought your virus only worked up to a mile away from Mike.” Mitya’s voice rises.

  “Not from Mike—the nearest virus carrier,” Muhomor says irritably. “The helicopter’s only about seven hundred feet above them, well within the fucking range.”

  Looking out through the helicopter pilot’s eyes, I can see he’s well trained. As soon as his trippy experience begins, he notifies Einstein. The AI sensibly sends the aircraft back to the base.

  “Shit,” Muhomor yells. “We need to stop that helicopter.”

  “On it,” Mitya says.

  “You’re too fucking slow.” Muhomor sounds like he’s gritting his teeth.

  “Why couldn’t you do it yourself?” Mitya snaps back.

  “Because I’m trying to think of a way out of this mess,” Muhomor replies, and they glare at each other.

  “How fast does this virus spread?” Mitya asks after a moment.

  “With the speed of electromagnetic waves, plus however long it takes to make a copy of itself—so very, very fast,” Muhomor says, his voice subdued. “It’s too late to stop the helicopter now.”

  He’s right. A huge number of new people Join us, some driving, some flying in a plane.

  “You realize what this means?” Mitya sounds awestruck.

  “Yes, I do. It means you guys shouldn’t have rushed me,” Muhomor says. “I was working on safety procedures but—”

  “You said you based the virus on the work you did for the government.” Mitya’s voice rises again. “What was the basis, Stuxnet?”

  Stuxnet is the old cyberweapon allegedly created by the US and Israel to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program. The thing got aggressive and spread indiscriminately worldwide instead of staying in Iran.

  “The basis for my virus is none of your concern,” Muhomor retorts. “I’m going to have to work on a countermeasure right now.”