Motherland

by Russ Linton

  She doesn't respond. I came here to talk and explain why I'd skipped work and maybe even get some advice. But the seventy-two-inch television is calling. Surely there's a game on. She wanted me to stop obsessing, right? Nothing better than watching guys stand around scratching their nuts and spitting to numb your brain. She returns with a glass of water before I can find the remote.

  "This better be vodka."

  "Two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen." She folds her arms and sits at the edge of the ottoman, not speaking, just peering expectantly.

  "You do realize I've been to parties...on a college campus."

  She covers her ears and grits her teeth as though she's taken an arrow to the knee. "Twenty-one," she says. "You're close, but not that close." Could be the reaction to my age has more to do with her. An embryonic sense of maturity reminds me not to go there. "How have you been sleeping?"

  There's a question she never restrains herself from asking. I can tell she's working her way up to another topic, one we always have trouble discussing. I'll shortcut the bullshit on this one. "You've already talked to him, didn't you?"

  She chews her lip and nods.

  I gulp down the glass. Water is fine. Drinking isn't my thing. I've had a few beers when I'm trying to be social watching a game or all those "parties" I get invited to.

  "Did you get freaked out by my disappearing act today on campus and call the Crimson Mask to come save me?"

  "You know I left with no way to get in touch with him." She looks away, and the next words are a quiet whisper. "He called me before you were picked up."

  Her memories of what happened hadn't been erased. She'd found the edge where that strange cloaking field ended and camped in the trees by the grave sites so she could remember—or forget. I was never sure which until now.

  "Why didn't you warn me?"

  "He wouldn't say why. He wanted to see you, talk to you. I told him to call you himself. I had no idea he'd go so far as to abduct you."

  "Eric's the one who called." I stare at the empty glass, wishing I did drink. "They want my help."

  Her face flushes and hardens. Instead of speaking, she stands and snatches the glass out of my hand. For a minute, I'm positive she's going to toss it at the wall or maybe put that beautiful television out of its misery, the sorry, unwanted step-child of this too-busy-to-couch-potato house. Only once have I seen her lose her shit. She took a baseball bat to the skull of a power-hungry Charlotte. A reaction triggered in a life or death situation, she doesn't cross the line this time. Her anger evaporates, and she gazes out the picture window.

  "You've got to stay away from that stuff, Spencer. Nothing good can come of it. You have a future. A career..."

  "Had," I say. "Surely you heard about the incident." She must have. Campus gossip plus the earlier phone call would explain her lack of surprise. "I can't go back there."

  "We can clean that up. Professor Ingram seems unwilling to discuss what happened and the students have nothing but eyewitness testimony. I know a guy in the admissions office. We can keep your exposure to those same students at a minimum. No need for explanations."

  She's reaching.

  "I'm going back to Whispering Pines."

  "Why?" She spins and hurt replaces the anger. Pain and loss were her parting gifts from the facility in the woods. Something we both share.

  "I have to. Eric's there."

  She closes her eyes and exhales through her nose. "I'm sorry, Spence. I know you're concerned about him. I've just seen you work so hard. I don't want you to throw it away."

  I pace the tile floor. Man, I used to have this enormous crush on her, and somewhere down the line, I fell into the role of little brother which was even better in its own way. She's been looking out for me. It isn't out of guilt or obligation. With half a dozen brothers, parents who are alive and normal, she understands family. I could argue with her over and over and never get sick of it.

  Fuck, I've needed that in my life for a long while. So long, a psychic entity latched on to those feelings and tried to steal them. And now the same entity is on the loose.

  "Not just Eric," I say, making eye contact. "Dad too. There's some weird shit going on. I think they're both in over their heads."

  "Spencer, the Crimson Mask can take care of himself."

  "No, this is different."

  That gets her attention. She heads for the kitchen, and when she gets back, she's got a beer—two, in fact. We both sink into the couch, and she puts an arm around me, digs out the remote, and finds a ballgame. Major League, the Big Show, where all the players want to be. I take a swig of the beer. For now, I'm going to enjoy normal.

  WE STARTED LATE, BUT we're not quite through the bottom of the eighth when the TV flickers. A rainbow bruises along the screen, and the guy at bat, Posey, melts away in a storm of pixels.

  "Shit," I say, hopping off the couch. "My ride."

  "Right," Emily says.

  No other words as she walks me to the door. A prism of colors swims through the frosted glass. The spectral light alternates between showing the Emily I know and one who's haunted, aged, devoured by these high ceilings and under the sorrowful examination of the locked and empty office. I want to ask her to come along, but I know why that could never happen.

  "You ever gonna sell this place?" It's enough to get her eyes off the fireworks.

  "I keep meaning to call a realtor. Martin wanted me to have it though."

  "He wanted you to do whatever you wanted."

  "I'll think about it," she says. "Maybe once the semester is over." We hug, mostly so I can avoid reminding her she's said the same thing every semester. "Call me. When you can."

  "I'm sure there'll be a way to keep in touch. Eric's been mainlining his digital life off a fat pipe of some kind and Charlotte..." I stumble over the name, and she notices. "She's been letting it through."

  Alarm rises at the name, but she calms quickly. "I don't want to know. But you will call."

  "Definitely."

  The security panel beside the door releases a squall of off-kilter beeps. Lights flash on the keypad, and it dies. We exchange a glance, and Emily opens the door.

  Aurora floats right there, one finger indecisively poised over the intercom button. When the door opens, they straighten, a sudden move like embarrassment, but you wouldn't know otherwise.

  "I thought you might be ready." The tone is equal parts uncertain and majestic and all around uncanny. But the movements as they withdraw their finger and wring their hands, are all too human. "I'll wait."

  We're left in stunned silence as the Augment glides to the fountain, bleeding green and gold ripples in their wake.

  "That's not possible," says Emily.

  "Since when did you become a skeptic? Was it after you were kidnapped by a mind controlling orphan and put into a cocoon-hammock?"

  "I mean she's literally not there. Solar particles, a magnetic field, she's a walking—"

  "Aurora," I interrupt. "I know, I did okay in Earth Science." I don't bother mentioning that happens to be the Augment's name. "Wait, did you say 'she?'"

  Emily signals her agreement with a fair imitation of Spock’s eyebrow. "An assumption, that's all. Based on her size, her movements."

  Admittedly, the loose collection of light is slender and smallish, but hell, I'm slender and smallish. I suppose I can see the right sort of outline but nothing obvious enough I'd place a bet. Until she stood frozen at the intercom, willing herself to have some kind of meaningful interaction, I'd mostly thought of her as my ride.

  A cascade of chirping echoes behind Emily. "Shit. My miners." Working incessantly to create the necessary digital blocks in the chains which make up this distributed form of virtual currency, the machines tend to complain when they get overheated. Or when there's a power fluctuation. "I gotta go," she says, frustrated. "Be careful. And call me!"

  "I'll try. Both accounts," I say.

  It's hard to watch the door close. Despite all the racket of her digit
al minions calling for comfort, she disappears slowly.

  Aurora puts out her hand. "Your friend. Or is she family? She's...seems lovely."

  "Thanks. She's a bit of both." I wasn't expecting small talk from this one. The insubstantial hand forms a cushion of air in my grip. "You know, Dad and Eric said this whole teleporting thing is fine. Are you sure?"

  "I've only ever found myself trapped inside a solid object once." Her answer is definitely not the one I was expecting. The whole cancer thing I'd joked about earlier suddenly seems to be a minor problem. My mouth is half-way to an argument when she adds, "But that," she says, "was solved with my Augmentation."

  The cloak of fluorescence which makes up her countenance dims in a narrow curve above her chin. The world fades.

  Great. An insubstantial smart-ass. Not even a good, solid place to put my foot.

  Chapter 5

  MY VISIT WITH EMILY out of the way, I'm ready to confront Dad once more. No sooner do we materialize in the parking lot, than Dad, Hound, and Ember all rush out to meet us. They're responding to some sort of emergency, and I take a bit of smug satisfaction from Dad's "where have you been" glare. He counters with a one-armed hug and zero greetings as he addresses the team. Aurora takes the sudden demands well, even eagerly. A hurried conversation, and the team becomes a green nimbus dissipating across the pavement.

  Eric shows me to my quarters which I assure him are temporary. I make an attempt to get some shut eye which naturally fails. Anxiety crawls into the bunker-like room. I'd secretly hoped beyond hope Charlotte's mindfuck wouldn't just erase this facility from my memory but everything else, too. If she could have plucked my bunker internment from my brain, maybe I wouldn't wake up frozen, bone-numbing, inconsolably cold in the grip of that shit hole.

  Enough torture. Time to hang with Eric. All that's going on here, and I'm done blaming him for this mess. What choice did he really have? I pass Danger's closed door. Pretty sure he stayed behind, but I'm not about to knock.

  "Are they on the way back?" I ask as I enter the command center at Whispering Pines. Even with Charlotte in a cell, coming into this same room where I saw her is difficult.

  "Nope. The team is still deployed," Eric says, emphasizing the proper terminology. He points to a screen on the lower left broadcasting from what must be a body camera. I see Ember and Hound in a remote jungle. "We might've caught up to Destructo, the human cannonball."

  "That was the big emergency? I thought that guy turned his life around, joined a circus." They all could. The greatest show on Earth best viewed from an exoplanet.

  "He was mostly harmless until a road rage incident." Eric twists across the arm of his chair. "How'd you miss that one? It was all over the news."

  "Oh, right." I vaguely recall an accident involving his fellow carnies, a lion some dumb cop tried to pepper spray, and the man himself barreling through the semi that hit their caravan. Straight through, like end to end. Nobody got hurt unless you count the chickens in the trailer. If so, it was a massacre. "Small time super villain move, huh?"

  Eric's reply is incredulous. "Hell no, bro! We can't have people with these kinds of powers just going off like that."

  I click my tongue, ready to explain exactly how right he is when he settles face forward into the chair once more—a chair with a distinct chunky profile. The black leather cushions fit into the cavity as elegantly as a bleacher seat cover. Two thin wooden armrests run alongside a blocky metal frame which sports jeweled panels studded with lights and switches. The entire thing balances on a bland, gray pedestal. It looks sorta like Doctor Who's K-9 banged an IKEA store, but the iconic chair is unmistakable.

  "Kirk's chair? From the bridge of the Enterprise?"

  Eric flicks one of the switches, and it engages with a heavy clack. The signature boatswain whistle rings out, several decibels louder than it needs to be. His eyebrows waggle. He's way too proud of himself.

  "Wow. Where'd you even get that?"

  "Found a guy on 4Chan who needed the cash. He bought it back in the day for three grand," he says, waving a hand, three fingers extended. "Three grand!"

  "You get it sterilized?"

  He hangs his hand in the air as the thoughts process. A quick glance at the chair, and he's back into his story. "Only 1701 were built, and I got this baby for half original list. Value plummeted after Abrams' Wrek."

  On any other day, I might be as excited as he is. This is not that day.

  "Alright, if I'm going to help," I say, ignoring an attempt at a fist bump. "Forget the chair and tell me exactly why you cut a deal with Xamse for all this. Hell, tell me how you're even getting signals through to this place. Has the cloak degraded that much since she came down off the roof?"

  Eric slides out of the chair, takes my loosely hanging arm, and bumps his knuckles on my open hand. "I get you're not thrilled about the Nanomech, Inc. thing. I gotta tell you, without Xamse's help, none of this would be happening. Tracking rogue Augments, I mean, the dude had an education in that, right? Plus, they already had all the necessary tech."

  "And he probably needed some place to hide it while the press and the cops and the government and whoever else tore apart Black Beetle's business."

  "Yeah, that too." Eric taps his nose repeatedly then pushes his glasses up. "But they eventually gave up, convinced he had a secret island base somewhere. Those were not good times for Xamse."

  "They weren't good for anybody." I shove Eric out of the way and try on his Captain's chair. More comfortable than it looks but I'm guessing for him, the view overcomes any minor ass cramps. The array of technology which makes up the nerve center is nothing short of staggering.

  "Considering I'm the one who leaked the story to begin with, Xamse's been exceptionally cool about it all," Eric says, a smug grin spreading as he calculates exactly how much his impulse buy is winning me over.

  "Cool. Yeah."

  Xamse had survived an intense media investigation and federal probe. Nobody would've cared that his psycho boss and Black Beetle alter ego, William Drake, was even involved had Meredith Wainwright not happily carried Eric's story throughout her media empire. Turns out she'd already been on the trail. She'd spent weeks posing as an interested investor, all the while trying to get access to Beetle's research facility. When Eric anonymously uploaded the details, she pounced.

  I'd kept close tabs on her reports while in school despite my burning desire to ignore anything about Augments, the Crimson Mask, or Killcreek. Turns out, I had something in common with the media heiress: The Black Beetle's bullshit had killed one of her parents. Some insect fifteen time zones outside its normal habitat bit Daddy Wainwright, and he died when doctors were unable to diagnose the cause in time.

  The end result of her efforts and the government's race to cover up saw to it Xamse took a lot of heat as he stepped up to helm Nanomech, Inc. He'd been oddly prepared. Had all the legal paperwork in order, and got me to dispose of Drake's corpse so nobody could trace the bullet in the dude's brain back to his gun. Yeah, the kid had saved me and had a rough few months, but he wasn't anybody I'd ever consider as a partner.

  "I get why you guys would want the tech," I say. "But didn't you ever consider the source? Xamse could've loaded every spare bit with viruses, malware, nanotech."

  "No man, it was all clean. I scanned, formatted, reset to default specs, and since your memory’s all foggy," Eric says accusingly, "I'll remind you how I made those nanobugs my bitch. Pretty sure there weren't any of those little critters burrowing around in our stuff." He's pacing and pinching at his lip, eyes on the ground.

  "Just 'pretty' sure?"

  Eric shoos me out of his new throne, squeezes in, and summons a tray from the control center with a flick of one of the armrest switches. Several keyboards and a thirty-button hardcore gamer's mouse extend in front of him, and he attacks the keys. The monitors fade from their cycling camera feeds and news stations, except for the Blair Twitch Project starring Dad. Diagnostics, hex dumps, and GUIs I've never
seen before replace the empty screens.

  "Here's the mystery signals I can't explain," says Eric. "Ports opening, shutting down, and not detectable by the standard routines. I had to write an algorithm just to find them."

  "You're compromised then. Surprise."

  He shakes his head. "When Charlotte was jacked in, we'd get weird spikes all the time. You could read them like facial expressions. They'd ripple across the entire internet. Wide-scale denial of service lookin' ripples. Untraceable, but enough to get some security experts thinking state-sponsored hackers were trying to bring down the whole thing. You believe that shit? Just my girl stretching her legs..." Eric pulls himself out of his dreamy awe as he registers my look of horror and gets back to hammering keys. "The only reason I caught on was because I was watching her so closely."

  "Wait, who is watching her now? Where is she?"

  "I wish I knew," he breathes.

  "I mean the thing pretending to be my mom. Where?"

  Eric thumbs a button on the mouse. One of the screens switches to a top-down view of a cell. Charlotte's there, sitting on a bunk, her hands folded in her lap.

  "Secured as requested," Eric mumbles.

  "Damn straight." She needed to be locked up, for good. "And my recommendation for guard duty?"

  "Polybius. Also as requested."

  The government had access to her at the same time they were trying to mine Polybius' brain so they could utilize his crazy encryption breaking skills. Yet they'd opted to franken-body him and try a different approach at control. If my theory held, they had to do it because she couldn't fuck with his mind. I do notice, though, one of my requests has been ignored. "She isn't restrained."

  "Crimson drew the line there. I mean, come on, that's your —"

  I cut him off with a glare.

  Eric jabs a button, and the cell view disappears. "We are compromised, sort of," he says. "But it's weird. I've been able to isolate those mystery signals to the wireless LAN. If the cloak weren't slipping away on the daily, we could ignore that vulnerability since nothing gets out anyway."