Binary Storm

by Christopher Hinz

  “Let’s walk,” Ektor Fang suggested. This time the words came solely from the tway on Nick’s left.

  “You sure that’s a good idea?” The alley offered a level of privacy, the surviving mokker notwithstanding. That supposedly was why Ektor Fang had chosen it for tonight’s rendezvous.

  “We’re not going far,” the other tway assured him.

  Nick fell into step between his host. They headed onto the pavement of the narrow street, which was flanked by row homes that had been old when Nick was a child. More than half of them appeared decrepit and abandoned. The buildings now housed squatters of every race, creed, addiction and perversion.

  A dozen cars were scattered curbside, mostly small electrics made by the surviving major automakers from Nick’s original era. Hondas, Buicks and Nu-Teslas seemed to dominate. All were battered and dented, and a few were speckled with bullet holes. It was a rite of passage for urban teens in unsecured regions to stone, shoot, or in any way possible damage moving vehicles.

  They walked two blocks in silence. Nick wasn’t surprised they encountered no pedestrians. At night, with mokkers, necros and other nefarious types slinking about, the majority of the zoo’s populace tended to huddle indoors.

  Still, for reasons that puzzled urban sociologists, the habits of Philly-unsec’s denizens were wildly disparate. Most neighborhoods were nearly deserted after dark. Yet a few became choked with humanity, although “humanity” was somewhat of a misnomer, considering the violence zoo residents often visited upon one another.

  The tways steered Nick left onto a similar street. They encountered their first pedestrians, a ragged quintet of men and women at the far end of the block. The group was huddled around a bonfire, roasting an animal skewered on a stick. From this distance, it looked like one of those meter-long mutant foxrats increasingly rampant in the zoo. Occasionally the animals were caught and served with crème de menthe as a delicacy in Philly-sec’s finer restaurants. But here the dining was more basic. Five pairs of hands greedily ripped into the foxrat’s edible parts.

  “Bon appetit,” Nick muttered.

  Ektor Fang made a final turn toward the third house from the corner. It appeared to be one of the abandoned ones. Nick followed the tways up the crumbling steps and through a splintered portal where a door had once stood. They trooped single file through a trash-littered hallway, past a bedroom splayed with mattresses. The squatter’s nest was deserted but the foul odor of urine and feces indicated recent occupation.

  The tways entered an empty closet, knelt in tandem and dislodged a floorboard. Mounted within the cavity was a Paratwa unity lock. Ektor Fang pressed his two left palms onto the ID plate of the double-handprint modem. There was a hiss of air and the closet’s rear panel slid open. Nick trailed his host into a darkened space.

  One of the tways uttered “lights.” Bioluminescent gases erupted from ceiling pockets, transmuting the command into a soft overhead glow. The door whisked shut behind Nick.

  He’d heard of binary safe rooms but had never been in one. The space was small but comfy: sofa, two chairs, kitchenette. A pair of cots were aligned headboard to headboard, the favored sleeping arrangement for a Paratwa.

  An open door revealed a bathroom built for two with a wide shower stall. Twin sinks faced one another. There were no mirrors. Tways often attended to personal grooming by gazing at one another. The toilet was the real oddity, a tortured clump of faux-porcelain splitting into side-by-side seats. Bladders and bowels, like all of a Paratwa’s internal organs, were metabolically interlinked, parts of a single autonomic nervous system. When nature called, a binary’s unique form of homeostasis could prompt the tways to urinate or defecate in unison.

  “Would you”

  “care for”

  “re-”

  “fresh-”

  “ment?”

  Nick shook his head. “I’m good.”

  One of the tways removed two water bottles from the small fridge. He pitched one bottle to his other half, whose back was turned. The second tway reached an arm behind his head and caught the bottle without looking.

  But of course he was looking. A Paratwa constantly perceived its environment through two sets of eyes. If positioned back to back, Ektor Fang’s field of view encompassed three hundred sixty degrees.

  Nick suddenly realized that a safe room for assassins wasn’t the safest place for a non-binary like himself to be. Since he now knew the location of this one, the night could only end with two scenarios. Either the safe room would not be used again after this evening or Ektor Fang would make sure that Nick couldn’t tell anyone of its existence. He took solace in the fact that after going to the trouble of setting up their meet, it wouldn’t make sense for the Du Pal to kill him. Then again, the actions of Paratwa assassins didn’t always follow rational paths.

  Ektor Fang popped open his water bottles, alternated sips between his two mouths. An arm motioned toward the sofa. Nick flopped down onto a stiff cushion.

  One tway sat in the chair facing him while the other lay down on a cot and closed his eyes. The ability to take a nap while remaining wide awake seemed an enviable trick. According to Ektor Fang, it was a trick that didn’t come naturally to Paratwa and could only be accomplished through years of practice.

  Binaries were a different species, or at least a hybrid version of Homo sapiens, depending on which school of taxonomists was generating definitions. An artificially grown cellular mass called the McQuade Unity accounted for the tways’ interlaced neural systems. When split in two, the halves of a McQuade Unity had the amazing ability to remain in telepathic contact with one another. By injecting the halves into two human fetuses, whether carried in the womb of a single mother or different mothers, the fledgling brain patterns of the fetuses interlaced. From that point on, they grew and developed as one mental-emotional consciousness.

  The tway who remained awake stared intently at Nick. He sensed Ektor Fang’s reluctance to get started, a trait he’d noticed before in his CI. He’d always assumed the hesitant attitude was prompted by a sense of guilt. In Paratwa circles, providing information to a human would be considered traitorous.

  “So, what do you have for me?” Nick prodded.

  Ektor Fang took another sip of water and finally unburdened himself.

  “Your E-Tech Board of Regents has a ruling counterpart among my people. It calls itself the Royal Caste. For more than a decade they’ve been working in secret to unite all the binary breeds. The goal of the Royal Caste is to bring into being a world lorded over by the Paratwa. We would become the master race. Humans would be reduced to our servants or slaves.”

  Nick hunched forward, feigning interest. In truth, E-Tech, Nick’s employer, knew all that. But in the clandestine realm in which he often operated, the goal was one-way information flow, eliciting knowledge from a source while providing no feedback about whether or not the information was of any importance.

  “The Royal Caste consists of five Paratwa,” the tway continued. “Codrus, Aristotle, Sappho, Theophrastus and Empedocles. The Royals are not like the rest of us. They are from a very special breed known as the Ash Ock.”

  Nick gave a noncommittal nod. E-Tech knew those facts as well with one exception, the name of the breed. Ash Ock. That was new. The name had an unpleasant ring to it.

  Ektor Fang smiled. “I suspect you already have some knowledge of these things.”

  “I guess my poker face isn’t what it used to be.”

  Nick didn’t believe he’d given anything away. He’d trained himself against making inadvertent revelations with body language. Even if the safe room was outfitted with hidden analyzers to measure micro expressions and other subtle bio indicators, he’d attained good control of his tells. He’d augmented that control by spraying his face with a neuro relaxant.

  Then again, there was still much humanity didn’t know about the Paratwa phenomenon. Although they originated from the same DNA as humans and were blessed with the same basic forms of menta
l-emotional perception and cognition, it was possible they were naturally shrewd at reading people. Or perhaps they possessed unknown technologies that enabled them to function as high-order lie detectors.

  “The Ash Ock are believed to have murdered their own creators, the genetic engineers who gave them life. And they’re different from other binaries in a number of ways. They have incredibly keen senses, particularly taste and smell, far surpassing those of the average human. They also have extended lifespans, beyond a century, although I don’t know the full range.” Ektor Fang paused. “But their greatest advantage is their ability to unlink, function as two individual beings instead of just two halves of a single entity. An Ash Ock Paratwa can choose to be one person or two.”

  Nick contained his surprise. If Ektor Fang was being truthful – and thus far all his information had stood up to verification – that last revelation was indeed major news.

  A Paratwa was defined by its singularity, by the fact that its tways were essentially the halves of a single consciousness that existed contemporaneously in two locations. The idea that one of the breeds was capable of truly separating into a pair of distinct individuals went well beyond Ektor Fang’s trick of having one of his tways remain awake while the other slept.

  Paratwa spies had infiltrated human society over the years. Although there was no absolute way to tell if an individual was a binary, short of the most detailed autopsy, in many cases the infiltrating tway had been exposed.

  The fact that the spy was not a single person but only half of one gave rise to certain behavioral quirks. Nick had been the primary architect of an E-Tech computer program that analyzed such quirks and assigned statistical probability to the likelihood that a suspect was not an entire person, only half of one. The program had been used to expose Paratwa infiltrators holding down top positions in various governments, organizations and corporations.

  But the existence of binaries able to unlink into separate individuals raised a disturbing possibility. In theory, the tway of an Ash Ock could insinuate itself into human society without providing such tells. Nick’s program likely wouldn’t be able to ID such infiltrators.

  “Any idea of the whereabouts of these Ash Ock?” Nick asked. “What country or countries they operate out of?”

  “No tactical information. I’ve told you that from the beginning. Too easy to be traced back to me.”

  He shrugged. “Can’t blame a guy for trying.”

  The tway shifted in his chair and gazed up at the bioluminescent glow hovering beneath the ceiling. The gases occasionally swirled, rendering certain areas momentarily brighter. Nick had a feeling that the Paratwa was getting close to the heart of the matter, the real purpose of their meet. What he’d revealed thus far were only appetizers.

  “I need your assurance that what I’m about to tell you doesn’t leave this room,” the tway said. “It is not actionable intelligence but for your background edification only. You are not to pass it on to anyone, not even in a clandestine manner. Not to your immediate superiors, not to friends, and certainly not into the E-Tech archives in any way, shape or form.”

  “You know I can’t promise that.”

  “Then we have nothing further to discuss.”

  Nick met the Du Pal’s sharp gaze. Whatever Ektor Fang had for him, it clearly was more sensitive than the information he’d provided in the past. Besides what he’d revealed tonight about the Royal Caste, much of the previous intel related to the skill sets and quirks of the various Paratwa breeds, as well as traits common to all binaries: how their dual-location brains functioned in real time; their deep-seated urges to periodically erupt into madness, a behavior known as flexing; their early training with the deadly Cohes; their sometimes demented sexual proclivities.

  He divided most of the information learned from those meets into seemingly inconsequential tidbits before feeding them into the archives, E-Tech’s massive database. In that way, the organization received a more complete picture of binaries in a way that lessened the chances that the info could be traced back to either Nick or his source.

  He’d always sensed that the Du Pal possessed far more sensitive intel, however, and that he was slowly building up to providing it. Perhaps he’d needed time to feel he could trust Nick, confirm that what he’d revealed in previous meets wasn’t coming back to bite him.

  Nick proposed a compromise. “What if I keep what you tell me sequestered at E-Tech’s highest levels?”

  “Not good enough. I suspect there could be one or more sleeper agents within your organization.”

  “Wouldn’t surprise me.” Such deeply embedded spies, most likely humans loyal to the Paratwa cause, could remain hidden for years before their masters ordered them activated.

  “Even if it isn’t actionable intelligence,” Nick continued, “I’d at least need to bounce it off someone at E-Tech, if for no other reason than to evaluate its validity. How about I limit it solely to the Executive Director?”

  The tway seemed to consider the idea. “You have access to him?”

  “I do,” Nick lied. If the information was as important as Ektor Fang was intimating, he’d find a way to get it into the hands of Director Witherstone, E-Tech’s top official.

  The tway stood. He began pacing back and forth in front of the chair. In their five previous meets, Nick had never seen him acting so nervous.

  “Your director also would have to swear to keep the information secret. Under no circumstances could he reveal it to your Board of Regents.” Ektor Fang scowled. “That illustrious group leaks like a sieve.”

  “No argument there.” Private deliberations of the regents, E-Tech’s fifteen-member governing body, too often found their way into the media. “I’m sure I can convince Director Witherstone of the need for the utmost secrecy.”

  Nick had never met the man, who operated out of the executive level eight floors above Nick’s modest workstation in Intelligence. But he liked him. The director had no-nonsense views about the growing danger represented by the Paratwa. Like a majority of the world’s sec populaces, he felt binaries needed to be corralled before it was too late.

  Nick secretly shared those beliefs, a viewpoint that present company would be less than thrilled to learn. Then again, Ektor Fang wasn’t naive. He undoubtedly had a good idea of Nick’s true feelings.

  Could Director Witherstone be held to Ektor Fang’s mandate? That was questionable. Still, he sensed that whatever the Du Pal wanted to pass on tonight was worth taking the risk, even if it meant the director might betray Nick’s trust, and thus the trust of a confidential informant.

  Ektor Fang continued to hesitate. “Perhaps I should meet personally with your director to convey this intel.”

  Nick contained his surprise. The request was unprecedented, not to mention outlandish.

  “No way is Director Witherstone coming into the zoo. In fact, unless you’re willing to have a sitdown with him on the executive floor of E-Tech headquarters, I don’t think that’s a workable idea.”

  “Probably not,” Ektor Fang said with a nod.

  On the cot, his slumbering tway also nodded, as if in agreement. Either asleep-awake or awake-awake, a Paratwa displayed fascinating eccentricities. In another life, Nick might have enjoyed being a researcher studying and documenting the binary interlink phenomenon. Of course, in that other life, an undeclared state of war would not have existed between humans and Paratwa.

  “This may at first seem rather illogical,” Ektor Fang began. “But I assure you it’s true…”

  * * *

  As Nick absorbed the Du Pal’s big secret, he realized his hunch about the impact of this revelation was correct. He didn’t even try to play mind games and hide his surprise. There was no need. Certainly, no such information supported by such a wealth of details had ever been passed along to humans before tonight. All he could do was sit there and nod dumbly.

  He was still trying to process the ramifications of Ektor Fang’s disclosure when the tway abruptl
y stood. At the same instant, the other tway swiveled his legs off the side of the bed and rose to a standing position. The second tway’s eyes remained shut. Some portion of the Paratwa’s bizarre dyadic consciousness must still be resting.

  The meet was over. The tways walked swiftly toward the door, the awakened one in the lead. Nick followed a pace behind. The manner in which the binary’s quartet of legs moved in tandem reminded him of the gait of a trotting horse.

  Ektor Fang waved a hand at the portal. Sensors read the motion and the door whisked open. They reentered the closet. The leading tway again dislodged the floorboard but this time lifted the entire unity lock out of its cavity. He folded the double-handprint modem into quarters and slipped the compacted device into a jacket pocket.

  From another pocket he withdrew a brown sphere the size of a golf ball. He chucked the sphere into the safe room. It rolled to a stop against the back of the sofa and began to emit a translucent cloud of vapor.

  Nick had heard of eliminators but had never seen one in action. The technology was rumored to be exclusive to the Paratwa, yet another of their scarily advanced tech toys.

  The eliminator’s vapor expanded to fill the entire space, including the bathroom. Before Ektor Fang closed the door, the vapor activated with a quivering hiss. In short order, the eliminator would prove worthy of its name and dissolve everything it touched. Furniture, kitchenette, sink and twin-seated toilet would decompose into fluttering ashes as the vapor interacted with the special plastics of which everything in the safe room would have been constructed.

  “You really didn’t have to do that,” Nick offered as he trailed the tways down the hallway. “I’d have never revealed this location.”

  “The safe room has been overused. I was tasked to clear it before it could be compromised.”

  It had been apparent to Nick from their first meet that Ektor Fang was part of the Paratwa hierarchy, that he served the Royal Caste. The Du Pal had admitted as much but refused to make clear just how high up he was and who he answered to. Prior to this meet, Nick had concluded that probably one of the Ash Ock’s top lieutenants was his immediate supervisor. But now, with the evening’s stunning revelation, Nick realized he must be even more highly placed. He likely had direct contact with one or more of the Royals.