by James Axler
“Hypnotic suggestion through air flow,” Kane said, shaking his head. Then he opened his eyes wide and looked at Brigid. “Baptiste, I’m starting to...forget, I think. Even this conversation is becoming muggy, like wherever it began is lost behind a dense wall of fog.”
“Automatic forgetfulness,” Brigid said, nodding. “That happens. You have to fight it.”
“That I figured,” Kane growled. “You have any idea how? Assuming I don’t have your whatchamacallit memory.”
“Disrupt the signal, disrupt the signal,” Brigid muttered, thinking aloud. “There has to be a way.”
“No. If you built this, would you create a way to break it?” Kane asked.
“Point,” Brigid accepted. “But it wasn’t designed with us in mind. You, me, Grant—we’re different. We’re not the local bumpkins who’ve wandered into this hellhole and been press-ganged into staying.”
“‘Bumpkins’?” Kane asked with an amused smile.
“Shorthand,” Brigid dismissed his query. “A voice spoke to me in my ear. The Commtacts,” she snapped her fingers. “The Commtacts!”
Kane looked at her, his brows furrowed. “You’re not making a lot of sense to me...Baptiste,” he said. Her name was becoming more difficult to recall.
Brigid lifted one hand to her ear, manipulating its shell. “We have Commtacts, communications devices hidden beneath the skin, running along the mastoid bone,” Brigid said. Her words were rushing out in a tumble now, as if she couldn’t get the information across to Kane fast enough. “These Commtacts allowed us to communicate with Cerberus. But they’re not working, the signal is blocked here in Ioville.”
“Then that’s a great big bust,” Kane said dourly.
“No, it isn’t,” Brigid told him. “The storm outside is blocking the satellite bounce—”
“It’s artificial,” Kane said, remembering his encounter with the snow wagon.
“Yes, of course it is,” Brigid said excitedly. “And it’s been going on so long that this ville must have a way to send a message through it, so that the—what did you call him?—Supreme Magistrate running the show can communicate with the—”
“Barons,” Kane finished for her.
Brigid’s eyes widened as he said it. “I was going to say ‘outside world,’” she explained. “Are you trying to tell me that this Supreme Magistrate Webb believes he’s still talking to the barons? But they’re dead, Kane. They’re all dead.”
“I told him that, and he didn’t like it,” Kane said. “I could tell. So, going back to the comms— What’s your plan?”
“The ville must have a booster or a wavelength that can penetrate the storm,” Brigid theorized. “If we can somehow tap into that, piggyback our signal onto theirs—”
“We could get a message out,” Kane agreed uncertainly, “but how does that help us if we’re in danger of losing our minds?”
“Memories,” Brigid corrected, “not minds. We can still think, we’ve just forgotten how to string thoughts together and what it’s like to think for ourselves.”
“So?” Kane prompted.
“So we contact Cerberus and get them to blast off a signal to us that—” she waved her hands dramatically in the air “—keeps us from slipping back into the walking coma.”
Kane looked dubious. “That’s one heck of a signal,” he said.
“Not really, no,” Brigid assured him. “We just need something that will block the effect of this Terminal White programming. Without that, everything else should be how it always was in our heads—shouldn’t it?”
Kane nodded real slow. “Maybe,” he said, “just maybe.”
“But I don’t know how we’re going to do that,” Brigid admitted. “Things are kind of a jumble in my head just now.”
“I think I know how,” Kane said.
Chapter 26
Kane had replaced his Magistrate helmet and finished dressing. His dark uniform now looked neat and smart, its dull fabric absorbing the light rather than reflecting it. Dressed, Kane led the way through the corridors of Cappa Level with Brigid following a pace behind. “Stay close,” he said out of the corner of his mouth, watching the various crisscrossing corridors for potential danger. There were Magistrates everywhere, some just coming on shift, others returning from shift, and others using the corridors as they went about their business.
“For a place with no free will, there’s a heck of a lot of law enforcement,” Brigid observed as they reached the end of the corridor unchallenged.
“More than you think,” Kane said. “Everyone in the ville is trained for enforcement. I know—I’ve been training them.”
“Including me,” Brigid realized with evident surprise. “Designated Task #015. Fitness.”
Kane glanced back at her for a moment as he led the way through the main area of Magistrate Division. “You think... What do you think?” he asked.
“I think we’re in trouble,” Brigid said dourly. “A whole ville of trained Mags, or at least people with Magistrate training—even just six hundred or so—would pose a credible threat to another community.”
Kane strode past the tidy, uniform desks where Magistrates were working at computer terminals. No one looked up. “So you think Webb is what? Building up an army?”
Brigid nodded. “Distinctly possible,” she stated.
“Not good,” Kane muttered as he pushed open the door and stepped into the Magistrate comms area. “No sir, not good at all.”
A few steps behind Kane, Brigid halted as she entered the room. It was a large area, twenty square feet at least, with communications equipment lining every wall. Two dull-eyed Mags were operating the equipment from high-backed swivel chairs, their eyes set on the bank of monitor screens and waveform registers, radio mics at their throats.
Kane turned back to Brigid and mouthed for her to close the door, which she did.
As the door clicked shut, Kane pulled his tranq gun from its holster and stepped between the two occupied swivel chairs. The Mags turned to face him, a look of consternation on their previously blank faces. Without a word, Kane turned the pistol on the Magistrate to his left and blasted him with a tranquilizer dart, which embedded itself in his chest before he could even say a word.
The second Mag moved fast, responding to the sudden danger within this operations sanctuary. He leaped from his seat and reached for Kane, who drove a sharp elbow at the man’s face.
The Mag stumbled back with a cry of pain. Kane turned in the same instant and brought the tranquilizer gun up in a swift movement, targeting the Mag, front and center of the chest, before launching another tranq dart from his weapon. The dart fired with a pfft of expelled air, drilling its nonlethal discharge into the flailing Magistrate.
It had taken four seconds in total.
A little longer, Brigid recalled, and the drug would kick in, putting both men to sleep.
Kane reloaded his tranq gun while Brigid gazed around the vast, equipment-filled room. The equipment featured many monitoring devices, including live camera feeds from both inside and outside Ioville. Brigid glanced across the bank of split-screen televisions, each one showing four different viewpoints at once from varying locations. Several showed banks of snow and she wondered if this was how the Mags had caught her and Grant all those weeks ago.
“Somebody certainly likes to keep watch,” Brigid observed.
“Magistrates are linked by helmet radio,” Kane told her, gesturing to the helmet he wore. “We get orders from Central Command instructing us where we are needed. Each order is sent to a specific Mag or group or Mags, strictly referred to by citizen number.”
Brigid smiled without humour. “Of course.”
Kane rolled the sleeping Magistrate from the console and let him drop gently to the floor. Then he studied the console readouts
before turning back to Brigid. “You have any idea how this stuff works, Baptiste?”
Brigid’s brow furrowed in thought as she examined the wall of controls. “They remain in touch with Magistrates outside the ville walls,” she reasoned, “which means—you’re right—they have a booster signal that can penetrate the storm. Let’s see—”
She flipped a switch, bringing up a wire-frame representation of the comms system on one of the computer screens. Tapping a few keys, Brigid brought up a diagnostic and followed the pattern of the broadcast signal.
“Got it,” Brigid said after a few moments. “If we tap into this signal, we can piggyback the Commtact broadcast and—hopefully—speak to Cerberus.”
Kane fixed Brigid with his steely stare. “So what are we waiting for?”
Brigid nodded, pulling the empty swivel chair over before sitting down and working at the keyboard. A series of rapid images flashed across the screens, showing the signal strength, tapping into the broadcast wavelength and running a hidden layer into the established signal, buried deep within the pattern itself.
As Brigid typed, Kane watched her, his eyes slowly narrowing. “Who...are you?” he asked. “What are we doing here?”
Brigid turned to him, her hands still working the keyboard. “Kane, it’s me, it’s Baptiste. Try to remember. Say it, say your name and mine.”
“Kane...?” Kane said. “Yeah, Kane. And you’re...Baptiste. What is—?”
“Keep focused,” Brigid instructed. “Don’t lose yourself to Terminal White again.”
Kane nodded reluctantly. “I’ll try.”
Brigid’s hands continued to operate the keyboard, altering the broadcast system’s protocols so that it would carry a Commtact frequency.
* * *
MEANWHILE, SUPREME MAGISTRATE WEBB was pacing through Alpha Level with a six-strong squadron of Magistrate guards, having just exited the private elevator that opened onto the highest level of the Administrative Monolith. He had a broadcast to make, one that required Alpha jurisdiction to engage. As such, it was one he could not make from the comms suite on Cappa, nor even from his own private suite—no, he needed to be here, a baron in everything but title.
He had tried to contact the barons forty times over, ever since Kane had sown that seed of doubt in his mind three weeks before, when he had inferred that the barons were all dead. Webb followed the barons’ orders, and he had been entrusted to run Ioville and the mind experiment known as Terminal White away from their direct supervision. He was trusted to make decisions, to smooth the day-to-day running of the ville. A truly obedient administrator does not need to be spoon-fed orders; he is able to operate under his own initiative and do so in perfect accord with the wishes of his superiors. As such, Supreme Magistrate Webb had reached the decision days ago and wrestled with how best to implement it. He would launch the assault on the rest of the country, taking control of each ville—first Ragnar, Snakefish and Cobaltville—to reinstate order under the miraculous protocols of Terminal White. To do less was to fail in his duty.
Ioville had been an experiment in ultimate order, in instilling full obedience in its subjects, the human race. But it had a deeper purpose than that—instilling order was merely an offshoot. In fact, Ioville was a spoke in the grand war machine of the barons, both factory and training camp for the construction of weapons and soldiers to fight in the name of baronial rule. Now it was time to set things in motion, to wipe out the Outlanders and protect the Program of Unification, to save mankind from itself.
After posting the six-man guard outside in the lobby of the baronial suites, Webb entered the comms room and sat down at the communications array. His gray eyes—eyes the color of a snow wolf’s fur—searched the console displays, hoping that maybe Kane had been wrong and that, after all these weeks of waiting, one of the barons might finally have responded to his request. But no, there was no indication that his coded broadcast had been received, let alone acknowledged.
Webb sat back, plucking up the microphone that rested on a stand, feeding into the baron’s comms unit via a thick, dark wire.
“Protocol Zero-zero-zero,” Webb stated into the mic. All around, speakers set within the walls of Ioville carried his summons, echoing it across the rooms and corridors, the factories and living quarters. The words echoed in the mind of every citizen of Ioville, and every citizen knew instinctively just what they were expected to do next. As one, the citizens left their designated tasks to obey.
* * *
“COME IN, CERBERUS, this is Brigid Baptiste,” Brigid said, watching the trail of her own signal register in a tiny oscillating wave on the computer display before her. She was using her Commtact, its subdermal mechanism hidden from human eyes, and she had managed to bolster the signal now through the Ioville Magistrate Division’s comms array. “Repeat, this is Brigid Baptiste. Please acknowledge.”
Kane stood across the room, close to the closed doorway that led out into the workroom, where over a dozen Magistrates were oblivious at their designated tasks. “Anything?” he asked.
Brigid rubbed her hand over her face and let out a heavy sigh. “Come on, Cerberus,” she muttered, “hear my plea.”
The comms array remained silent for what seemed a very long duration. Brigid and Kane waited, holding their breath, listening to the nothingness stretching out before them, the silence that promised to lose them forever to the hypnotic thrall of Terminal White.
“Hello, Brigid.” The words came through over their Commtacts. They were cracked and laced with static hiss, but there was no missing the joy and surprise in the voice. “Is that really you?”
Brigid closed her eyes in relief. “Brewster? It’s me, all right. I’m here with Kane. He’s able to hear you, so don’t split the signal just yet.”
“Gotcha,” Brewster Philboyd responded from several hundred miles away over the medium of the linked Commtacts. “We’ve been looking all over for you. Where are you? And how is it you’re contacting—?”
“Brew— I’ll explain as we go along,” Brigid promised. “Right now I need you to do something. Lock on to this signal—”
“Already doing so,” Brewster assured her, speaking over Brigid’s words.
“—and send a continual stream of chatter to me, Kane and Grant.”
“Do what?” Brewster asked, clearly surprised.
* * *
THE CERBERUS OPERATIONS room in Montana was abuzz with nervous energy. Brewster Philboyd had been manning the comms console when Brigid’s message had come through—in fact he had been in the middle of a negotiation with Domi, who was out in the field in the Florida Everglades following up what was evidently a false lead on the disappearance of the CAT Alpha team. When Brigid’s signal came through, Philboyd had excitedly called over Lakesh from his supervisor’s desk at the back of the room.
Now, Lakesh stood behind Philboyd’s desk. Philboyd himself was standing also, a headset over his ears, fingers rushing over the keyboard of his computer terminal to try to get a fix on Brigid’s signal. Brigid’s voice came over the terminal’s speakers, accompanied by hiss.
“I need you to send chatter,” Brigid repeated.
“What kind of chatter?” Brewster asked, confused.
“Anything, doesn’t matter,” Brigid said with a hint of strain in her voice. “We’re currently in a location called Ioville—”
“A ville?” Lakesh said in shock. There were nine villes—to discover a tenth was such a shift in paradigm it felt like fiction.
“—but the place uses something called Terminal White to brainwash its inhabitants,” Brigid continued, unaware of Lakesh’s interjection. “I figure that if we can run something to disrupt that signal then we might just be able to hold on to our sanity. Or regain it. Whichever.”
Philboyd nodded uncertainly. “I’m hearing the words, Brigid, but I’m no
t sure I’m following. You say you’re—?”
Lakesh tapped urgently on Brewster’s desk and the younger man stopped talking. “Let me speak to her,” Lakesh said gently. A moment later he was linked up to the Commtact via a portable headset with built-in microphone.
“Brigid dear, this is Lakesh,” he began. “I cannot begin to express how relieved we all are to hear that you are safe.”
“Well, I wouldn’t exactly—” Brigid began.
“Hush, my dear,” Lakesh interrupted. “Let us get this signal you have requested up and running, then we may discuss the whys and wherefores at our leisure.”
“Good idea.”
“Now, what precisely did you have in mind?”
“From what I can discern,” Brigid explained, “Terminal White is a constantly evolving hypnotic suggestion which pumps into the brain, bypassing and overriding all other thoughts. I haven’t worked out a way to stop that, but I figure that we can use the Commtacts to at least disrupt it.”
“I see,” Lakesh acknowledged, gesturing over for physician Reba DeFore to come join him from her monitoring desk close to the ops room’s large doors. “And what would this signal entail?”
“Anything really,” Brigid reasoned. “Just something that would keep us grounded and stop us getting drawn into the hypnotic miasma.”
Lakesh thought for a few seconds. “So, ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb,’ say?”
“Yes,” Brigid said. “Exactly that. On a loop to break the conditioning that’s trying to get inside our brains.”
As he spoke, Lakesh looked at Philboyd, who had retaken his seat before the comms desk. “‘Mary Had a Little Lamb,’ on loop, repeating every—what?—four minutes, Brigid?”
“Four minutes is good,” Brigid agreed. “We still want to be able to hear what’s going on around us. But you need to pipe it through to Grant and Kane, too. We cannot find Grant.”