by Russ Linton
All forward momentum stops.
I'm paralyzed mid-stride. Destructo is inches from impact, poised like an Olympic sprinter on pause. Eric groans. He's flopping around, trying to see.
"Spencer," Mom says, her voice shaking. "Help Eric."
My muscles release and I stagger forward with the pent-up momentum. Before I've even recovered, my feet trudge toward Eric as though that same irresistible product of mass and velocity were continuing to exercise their control. Mom reaches out her hand. "Destructo, give me the gun."
"Yes ma'am." He swallows and with a single fluid spin, hands it to her grip-first.
"Go to your room."
"Yes, ma'am," he says, backpedaling into the hall.
With a serious knot forming on his forehead and clutching his side, Eric stares at Mom, dumbfounded. My eyes haven't left her either, and I'm yanking half-assed on his arm, trying to grok what the hell happened. She wanders aimlessly to the monitor banks and watches Destructo on the security feeds as he makes his way down the hall toward the lobby.
"He's going to do what I say. I know he is. I'm...I'm making him," she whispers. We've shared plenty of painful moments before. This, I can't begin to fathom. She's struggling with the realization that she's made a free-willed human being into her meat puppet. "He'll do anything I say." She pulls tight as if trying to feel her past a greasy film building on her skin.
I've got Eric lying as comfortably as he can on the hard floor, and that's all I can bring myself to do besides watch her.
"Mom," I say, transfixed by both her and the monitors. Destructo is halfway through the lobby. Security measures disengaged, sunlight floods the exterior from the parking lot. Destructo doesn't even glance toward freedom. "Are you okay?"
She swallows and nods.
I turn my attentions to Eric, hoping to at least get him to his bunk, and a shudder runs through the floor. Mom releases a helpless gasp. I rush to her side to see strobing darkness envelop Destructo as the security doors hammer closed. Gas spews from the ceiling vents.
Spell broken, the human cannonball panics. "I told ya I'd do it! I was gonna do it!"
"My God!" Mom says.
"What did you do?" I ask, pushing past her and frantically scanning the control board.
"Nothing. I didn't...nothing. I wanted him to go back to his cell, that's all."
Destructo falls to his knees in the dense cloud. He staggers up, and he's a blur, colliding with the exit barrier. He tumbles backward and sprawls.
"Eric! How do I override this?"
"Manual cut off," he strains. "Third panel, covered switch."
I'm counting, guessing. Just like Eric to leave it all unlabeled. A map in his head which makes him indispensable. "Got it!" I snap open the cover and flick the switch.
Nothing.
Guns emerge from hidden ports. Mom covers her mouth and shrinks away. I mash the switch, again, again. Destructo chokes and coughs as the barrels open up full auto and he makes one last attempt from his hands and knees to summon the power which has so often kept him alive. He's a blur at the floor near the exit, then a motionless heap. Tracers rip toward him. Between the intermittent black and hellish glow, the emergency bulkhead spatters with inky splotches of blood.
Mom collapses against me, and a girlish giggle sounds over the intercom.
Chapter 34
CHARLOTTE LIFTS THE lockdown without warning, without another round of creepifying giggles. By all appearances, we're free to leave the comcen. Not surprisingly, we don't. Her little display convinces Eric he has no need to visit the infirmary. Plus, he's being summoned to field a call from the away team. Charlotte offers to handle it, and Eric momentarily forgets his pain.
After what happened to Destructo, Mom fades into the background. I try to comfort her, but don't know where to start. A final squeeze before I join Eric. I need to know what's happening.
The once bustling factory town in China is vacant. Abandoned in less than twenty-four hours and no sign of Aurora. Their air-gapped office has been flooded with magma courtesy of Vulkan. They left the surviving miners running. No sense in calling off those little foot soldiers, I suppose. Dad seems annoyed when I make them look for a vending machine. Citizen Prime has been evaced as well.
I'm only half tuned-in to the status. Mom's sitting rigidly on the floor, back to the concrete wall, just staring at her hands. Who the fuck is in there?
Eric covers the mike. "What do I tell him?"
I can't see his face but know we're both focused on Mom. The team's en route, they can't get here any faster, especially since they couldn't find Aurora. I give the best answer Dad's trained me to give.
"Tell them there's been an incident. They should hurry. No details."
With family matters, Eric has no problem deferring to me, and I'm thankful. Mom appears vacant, and I'm afraid I'm losing her. She'd told me in the desert Charlotte wasn't curled up in that gray matter any longer. That was why she couldn't use those psychic powers. A bluff is all she'd had. But here she is, forcing Destructo on his death march and computer Charlotte seizing the chance to finish the job. I've got to make some sense of this.
"Eric," I whisper. "Is the cloak still active?"
He's scanning twenty screens at once. Wrapping up the call with the team, diving deeper into his obsessions as a salve for his pain. Eyes dart as he answers. Screens incessantly lure him. "No. And that's the least of our problems. It's starting."
I don't need to ask. Shortwave's assault. We're out of time.
THE OPENING SHOT IN this war was aimed squarely at us. That hiccup in the local power grid? No accident. They tried to take our base offline, for good. Vulkan could have done that the first time around, though something tells me Polybius wouldn't have been such an easy convert had anybody been hurt.
"I guess it was better than having an ICBM hijacked and sent our way," I say.
Eric's navigating an array of menus, a single hand gliding between his steroidal mouse and keyboard at impressive speeds. A look comes my way that says, "don't think they haven't tried."
Even without main power, Eric is able to get the word out. Systems redundancy, he long ago insisted on an emergency generator for both the outgoing tower and the base. Friends of his, and mine I suppose, manage to divert the attacks on the power grid long enough for the employees there to recover. For them, it's a chaotic storm of network traffic, a sky full of flak, which soon storms across the globe.
Hearing the script readers on CNN try to cover this gives me a headache. One jackass prattles on about the difference between DDoS and DOS. An age of constant information and nobody knows a damn thing.
There's a bit of poetry to this being a retirement home. Seems everyone associated with this place gets taken out of action in one way or another. Mom's utter silence unnerves me. What could be going on inside her mind?
Now that I've had a chance to think, reconnect, we've both realized this is our normal. College? Who needs that noise? Hourly wage, an efficiency apartment, and an internet connection? Would that ever be enough? But we have to confront this crazy Augment thing together, as a family. I can't lose her.
It's almost a relief when she finally curls up on the floor to sleep. I earn a vicious look from Eric when I sneak away from our brave new war to snatch the blanket and pillow from the closest room.
Time to work.
Eric's in the zone. I could never keep up, but I'm doing my best. Whatever's keeping him upright and conscious now must have more to do with his trance-like hacking state than any fear of passing through the kill box to the infirmary. He looks feverish but is trapped in a flow which won't abide conscious thought.
My job is herding the nanomechs sprinkled across the circuitry of the world. Xamse has been a busy little tycoon spreading their joy. Private enterprise, government contracts—most have hardware on Shortwave's vulnerability list, and most have been exposed to his virus. As Orwellian as these microscopic technicians can be, there's no denying their effectivenes
s.
Endless hours pass. With the team still en route to the base, the world outside is waking up to the fallout of a war waged entirely in virtual spaces. It doesn’t take long before Eric's cobbled together resistance is as much at war with itself as the Collective. I'd say we're at the beginnings of complete and total anarchy. Not quite what Shortwave had in mind, however, he can maybe ride it out. The rest of the world, not so much.
As part of Shortwave's plans, The Collective launches a massive assault on financial institutions. I recall him mentioning the old adage "money is power." Slowly, it becomes clear he's targeting the banks and financial industries. This must be Polybius' role. State of the art encryption crumbles.
If the cable news is clueless about technology, they're well primed about the ins and outs of banks. Here's a story they can run which will resonate with everybody on the planet with a debit or credit card. Beneath a thin veneer of choice in a banking industry dominated by very few global players, there's a choke point, a hidden monopoly—the processors and infrastructure behind the magic card swipes.
We're playing defense, even helping repair China’s Great Firewall. Whatever we can do to maintain the status quo. The shockwaves are immense: financial trading disrupted, delivery of basic goods made impossible. Man on the street interviews show people coming to the realization that the plastic they carry is just that, useless plastic. The mad rush that precedes any disaster has begun at banks, grocery stores, discount chains, and all they can do is bar the doors or require that their customers walk in with verifiable paper cash.
In the midst of this consumer Armageddon, The Collective begins compromising critical government systems. Polybius is dropping banks, one by one. Meanwhile, Shortwave has turned his miners and every other bit of compromised tech into a brute force decryption plague. Witnessing the distributed will of machines worldwide being collected and focused like the beam from the Death Star is jaw dropping. Military installations. More power companies. Shortwave collects every last key in the chaos. All the information he needs to create his borderless world. Governments made irrelevant.
"I just inoculated parts of the NSA for Christ's sake," I say.
Battlefield Commander Eric doesn't answer. More systems fall the world over. China and Russia had the best response. They've built digital fortifications which they can switch on at will to isolate themselves. Trouble is, those systems have been compromised, too. Several pathways in persist, and the Collective keeps them quietly on standby while the deal with the tech juggernauts.
Despite our best efforts, we can't hold back the tide. And as our allies on the deep web start to understand what's really happening, there's more celebration than condemnation. This is the hactivist wet dream, made real.
I hate to be that guy. No, actually, I'm cool with saying it this time. "I told you so."
No response from Eric. He's on the crest of a tsunami of information surfing toward Fukushima. One screen has stayed consistent out of all of them: his IRC client window. Typical D3dm4n$ Ch3$t special, it's a modification of an open source TLS messaging system that's already rock solid. No activity, but he's obviously waiting to hear from her.
Fatigue sets in, and I watch my tasked screens go dark one by one. Our foot soldiers defect, their impromptu response overwhelmed by an attack years in the making, planned in secret out of an air-gapped office in B.F.C. More and more, all that's left for me is to check on Eric's progress.
He's increasingly a one-man show. Suddenly his waiting chat window fills with incoming requests directed to 3n1g|/|4. He supplies snippets of code, IP addresses, decryption routines. Fewer and fewer usernames appear in the mix until one begins to dominate the incoming traffic: Chroma.
They're speaking a language only they fully comprehend. Even after the usernames become one, it appears she's establishing a new connection every time, mirroring his same style. A constant cycle of identity which he's thumbed into the wheel of his mouse. Every connect, send, receive is encrypted with a new key.
Mom whimpers fitfully on her pillow. Can it be that easy? The flick of a switch?
"You're working with her. With Charlotte."
His unerring fingers miss a key. A quick glance and he winces as if moving his eyes too far has caused the pain in his ribs to resurface. Then he's absorbed in the flow once more.
A Faustian bargain. His skills have been leveled up through an egregious case of twinking. He and, I guess, Chroma—the new handle for Charlotte's digital existence—have circled their virtual wagons at an unfamiliar address. I run my own trace. El Segundo, California.
"ICANN," I say.
A nod from Eric in response.
"Why?" Hard to hide my derision. All the conspiracy theories and hyperbole surrounding ICANN, the internet yellow pages, are overblown bullshit. "The Collective should just take it offline and let the alternatives surface. It fits their scheme."
"People are stupid, Spence. They vote for the leader of the free world based on Facebook posts." Eric hasn't pulled himself away from the screen, his answer filtering stiffly through the concentration. "Fastest way for Sergei to get the word out? Control what's already there."
All the pieces are falling into place. If the Collective can hold ICANN for even a few days while the world hammers the public search engines with "why won't my fucking ATM card work?" and "what is The Collective?", they control the answers. No need to set up their own infrastructure. They'll own everything. All the things and all the answers. And Shortwave can institute his distributed revolution.
"We're done." Eric slumps in his chair, head tilted to the ceiling. A moan slips out as he sinks into the thin vinyl backrest.
"Done?"
"Yep. All over. The battle. The internet. This entire goddamn base!" He throws his arms up and instantly regrets it. "We're burned. Toast."
"Launch a counterattack," I suggest. "Our own DDoS?"
"Who? The entire world? No. No. Fuck this." Eric pitches his headset into the control panel hard enough the mike snaps. "I'm Audi." He cringes as he gets up using the armrests and hobbles around the chair, maintaining contact, unwilling to get too far from the support. I rush to help.
"We need to kill it."
"Nope." An adamant grunt.
"Why not?" I whisper. "Because of Chroma?"
His cheeks flush. "You may not realize it, but she just helped us."
I'm floored. I almost step away, forgetting his weight is increasingly transferring onto me. "Like when she painted the lobby with Destructo?"
"He was going to hurt us. She didn't understand."
"You don't think she knew he was immobilized by the gas?" We trundle toward the exit, and I place him in the chair he fell from earlier while I check on Mom. "Besides, if you're such good friends, just talk her onto a thumb drive while we wreck things. And if we can toss it in Mount Doom, all the better."
"Not how she works." He shifts uncomfortably in the chair. "That worldwide infrastructure probing was her growing into a new body. She needs it all. To survive." A loaded glance and he indicates the security cameras.
Chroma's watching. How could we ever control a terminal long enough to cut off the tower, let alone shut her down completely? But if she's truly transferred, completely, wholly, maybe there's hope. Maybe Mom's still with us.
She can't be comfortable, the way she's curled on the hard tile, her features etched with concern. I reach out to touch her, and her eyes pop open. My best attempts can't hide the shock.
"Your father, he's worried about us," she says, dreamlike and far away. "He'll be back soon."
I help them both to their beds before I crash. My stomach growls but gives up when I recall the route to the kitchen is through a slaughterhouse. Mom coping with a sudden manifestation of psychic powers, Eric coming down off his coding high sans Mountain Dew and a field exercise injury to boot, we're all past exhausted. Our global cyberwar took what? Hours? Days? Less time than a flight from China, I suppose.
Shit. Chroma's the only
thing on sentry duty. Eric's helper my ass. I drag myself down the hall to sit at the edge of the lobby. Somebody has to greet our returning away team. Warn them not to be the next Destructo.
Chapter 35
SPENCER? WAKE UP, SON." Dad crouches beside me at the edge of the barracks hall. Sun streams around his broad shoulders through the lobby doors. People shuffle around the entrance, quietly. Ember. Hound.
He doesn't need to say it twice. A stench of putrid death stronger than smelling salts washes up my nostrils. Stomach churning, I gag and scramble up, not without his help. Both of his arms are in motion, and I'm on my feet in no time.
"Shit." I cough, and he draws close. "Can't be here..."
"What happened?"
"Chroma...I mean Charlotte happened here." A fresh wave of nausea strikes as Hound and Ember carry out the remains slung between them, a once whole piece of meat put through a shredder, glistening in the early morning light. Ember curses fervently. Dad's imposing form thankfully blots out the scene. "Dangerous," I gasp. "She's not only integrated with the computer, she can control the base."
"Hound, Ember, double time and stay alert. Could be trouble," he says, giving the room a wary sweep. Unaffected by his grisly duty, Hound signals his agreement with a tilt of his head. Ember keeps up her string of curses. "Your Mom? Eric?"
"They're getting some rest. Eric and I tried to solo the digital onslaught. No luck."
Dad seems aware of the changes, along with the rest of the waking world. "We had trouble landing. GPS links were down, and the tower had to dig out a thirty-year-old manual for procedures. Hound," he calls. "Let's get the rest of the team."
"Wait. There's something about Mom you need to know," I say.
"She wasn't hurt, was she?"
"Not exactly." Any injury she suffered was from the thought she'd been complicit in Destructo's murder. She's been a victim of Charlotte's mental games once before. Perpetrating that kind of control on another person must have devastated her. "She's been able to use some of Charlotte's old powers. I can't explain how, but since she's in Charlotte's body and the whole Augment process is a genetic tweak, it kind of makes sense."