Relentless

by Jonathan Maberry

  Tap.

  “Here we jump into biochemistry, specifically eugeroics,” Doc said. “And before you embarrass yourself by telling me you don’t know what that big word means, it’s the science of developing wakefulness-promoting drugs. Ostensibly for dealing with a raft of sleep disorders from narcolepsy to idiopathic hypersomnia, with some very specific train stops in between. But Isaac here—who, I should tell you, is more than just a hobbit-size stud muffin—thinks that some of this research ties into a case that Church started a bunch of years ago and Ledger wrapped while on a gig in Paris with Violin. The bulk of this research is new stuff, and it’s not the kind of thing that’s going to play well with labor unions. There are reports in there for use in factory workers to permit them to work shifts of forty to sixty continuous hours—and that’s like combining a sweatshop with the Boston Marathon. And references to research lines with military applications. Think about that—soldiers on a specific mission who don’t need to sleep and don’t tire even with constant movement and exertion.”

  Tap.

  “Then this stack is science straight out stolen from us, and I think it was back before my time, during that time MindReader was being bent over a barrel and rogered. Before Bug gave her a big ol’ makeover. There’s data here that I know for sure we took from the Jakobys—from the Dragon Factory run by Paris and Hecate, and from their father, Cyrus. There are extracts from Zephyr Bain, from Sebastian Gault, from the Seven Kings, from maybe twenty of the cases the DMS worked on. And all of it is coded. Bug thinks the codes are a cross-indexing system, and he put someone on it to figure out how it works.”

  She tapped another, but then hesitated.

  “I could go on,” she said. “Bottom line is that this is both a jackpot and a big ol’ ball of confusion.”

  “How so?” asked Wilson.

  “Well, on one hand, it’s a treasure trove that will, I hope, give us a clearer peek inside Kuga’s research and development process. Given enough time, we might be able to determine what they’ve been working on and the likely applications of the same.”

  “Except that it may not be as random as it appears,” said Isaac.

  “Correctamundo,” agreed Doc.

  Wilson chewed his lip as he wandered around, looking at the mountains of material. Without turning, he said, “The manifests say that there were biological samples. Is there anything there that might explain this?”

  “Oh, hell, sugar bear,” said Doc, “there’s forty kinds of bioweapons. We have full specs on some—and, Rage is in there, by the way—and then there are some that all we have are samples, but no specs. Those are in a hot room, and I have people studying them.”

  “What about the people? The, um, test subjects?”

  “We turned them over to my big Wooly Bear and his team. The patients are in quarantine.”

  Wooly Bear was Dr. Ronald Coleman. He was a molecular biologist who oversaw a Division of Integrated Sciences dealing with the hunt for what he called “disease identity,” a radical new field of diagnostics.

  “He’ll suss out what was done to them,” Doc assured him.

  “Some of those folks have implants,” said Isaac, “and we think that’s where a lot of this ties together.”

  “In what way, exactly?” asked Wilson.

  Isaac smiled. His smiles always looked like he was wincing from some mild abdominal pain. “The more we tried to separate out the different fields of science here, the more they seem to want to clump together. I mean, especially if we start with a ‘what’s the worst that can happen’ point of view. And if you start with the idea of cybernetic implants for soldiers and add a cocktail of chemicals to enhance stamina and wakefulness, then what we might be looking at is a very damned scary new kind of super-soldier.”

  “Or,” added Doc, “if you stir in some nasty short-duration, high-effect bioweapons as a possible payload, we could be seeing the birth of the next generation of suicide bomber. A virtually unkillable soldier who is faster, stronger, and able to fight his way into a crowded airport, a major concert, or a sports event and make himself go boom.”

  Scott Wilson stared at them, and he could feel the blood drain from his face.

  “You were right,” said Isaac to Doc. “You said he’d look like that.”

  CHAPTER 21

  SALES PRESENTATION VIA SHOWROOM

  “Hello, my friends,” said Mr. Sunday, “welcome back. How delightful to see all of you, and a big welcome to some new folks who have joined us. I know that several of you are here on the recommendation of regular—and satisfied—customers. Don’t forget to ask me about the new customer premiums after the regular presentation.”

  Mr. Sunday was dressed in a lightweight wool suit with a hand-painted tie and polished oxblood loafers. He looked like he was ready to host a cocktail mixer at a tech conference. All casual smiles and relaxed posture.

  “We live in a troubled world,” he said. “There are all kinds of problems out there, both foreign and domestic. Access to the internet has allowed for unification of dissident voices, which in turn has led to strikes and walkouts, work slowdowns, and pressure from global watchdog groups. Our police forces are under siege for doing their jobs, and soldiers following sensible orders are being tried as war criminals. It’s getting to the point that we are being prevented from running our companies and our countries the way they need to be run. Are you with me still?”

  He began pacing slowly, making sure that at any given moment he was making eye contact with one of the potential buyers. He made sure to make such contact with every face on those screens. He would let his eyes linger, forcing contact until he saw a tell—a nod, a tilt of the head, a smile, or even a wince. Everyone had a tell, and what mattered was how they reacted relative to what he was saying, down to key words he used and subtle inflections intended to evoke those reactions.

  His pace was slow, but his hands moved at varying speed, each gesticulation giving emphasis to some point, much as a conductor’s baton will.

  “A corresponding challenge,” he said, “is that public pressure growing out of trending social media outrage often results in either stock drops, knee-jerk legislation, the implementation of regulations imposed by whoever is up for election and wants to appeal to key demographics, and also the courts. What was it Shakespeare said? ‘First, kill all the lawyers’? I’m for that. Except our lawyers, of course.”

  His laugh was warm and inclusive. A “we all get this” thing.

  “The days when we could just send in a quality control team seem to be passing.” He leaned on those words, casting them as catch-all euphemisms that his customers could apply as needed. “And the resulting lawsuits are obscene. The amounts that juries are awarding these days is beyond absurd. All that class-action attorneys have to do is show ten seconds of footage from a smartphone and the jurors start adding zeros to the amount awarded to the plaintiffs.”

  He paused and turned toward the full bank of screens and gave three measured seconds of his full presence.

  “What if we could control each of those kinds of moments?” he asked calmly. “What if we could control what is—and more to the point, what is not recorded, what is not allowed to be shared on Twitter or Instagram or any other social media platform?” He paused. “And what if in those moments of actual privacy, we could completely resolve the situation? Whether that is an arrest in one of the more problematic parts of one of our cities? Or a field operation to resolve a political inconvenience? Or a money-shredding strike at a factory?”

  Another pause.

  “What if each of us possessed the technology to completely own that moment and to later control any messaging? What if here in the third decade of the twenty-first century we could move and act with the cost-efficient impunity of the 1950s? Yes, I can see that you see the potential. But, my friends, let me actually show you how this played out for one of our clients. I share this with the full permission of that client, who is a very happy returning customer. Settle back and
watch…”

  CHAPTER 22

  REALSPORT FACTORY

  MUTIARA VILLAGE

  CENTRAL JAVA, INDONESIA

  Darmana was a very small woman—under five feet, less than ninety pounds—but she stood tall as the two men approached her. Behind her, forty other women, including several who were barely into their teens, shrank back. However, Darmana stood firm, arms wide as if she could shield the other workers from what was coming.

  A few men—employed in the same factory to carry and package the heavy boxes of sneakers, sweatshirts, and other branded items—hung at the fringes of the group. They looked ready to run, and more than half of them had already deserted the protest.

  And Darmana held fast.

  One of the two men wore a lightweight gray business suit that probably cost as much as she made in a year. He wore a crisp white shirt and striped red-and-gray tie. A very expensive-looking gold wristwatch caught bits of sunlight as his arms moved. He had thinning hair, brushed to conceal the paucity, and gold-rimmed steel glasses. He was smiling in the wrong kind of way for what was happening.

  “He’s from the corporation,” murmured a woman behind her. “He’s come to fire us.”

  That sent a ripple of nervous chatter through the group, but Darmana shushed them.

  “He doesn’t have police with him,” she said. “None of those thugs, either. Let’s hear what he has to say.”

  Her eyes, though, flicked to the other man. The other was not one of the factory managers or supervisors. He was a stranger to her. He did not wear a suit and tie. Or even a sports shirt, which was better suited to the oppressive heat. Instead, he was dressed head to toe in loose-fitting black clothes that looked like something a soldier might wear, except there were no emblems or insignia. No weapons, either.

  The men walked slowly toward her. Two more men dressed in the same black clothes leaned against a dark SUV, muscular arms folded across their chests, eyes hidden behind sunglasses.

  “Just be calm,” said Darmana quietly. “Maybe they’ve come to talk.”

  This was day six of the shutdown. Darmana and her supporters had used chains, ropes, even plastic zip ties to seal the doors to the factory. For one glorious day, everyone was behind her. All eighty-eight workers, and even two of the shift supervisors, though they were likely spies sent to learn about the new union’s plans.

  Now there were forty protesters left. Some of the others stayed home, claiming they were sick. A few went looking for other work, finding it in similar sweatshops. And a dozen had climbed into the factory through a rear window and were actually working—hoping to curry favor with the supervisors once the protest was squashed. As it would certainly be. The government favored the corporations, as it always had. The world press was denied access to the town once the strike started, and only handpicked reporters were allowed to cover the event. What they wrote was mostly cut and pasted from corporate headquarters, the government’s public relations office, or from articles from The Capitalist and other magazines or news services slanted toward the owners.

  Darmana had read a few of those. Articles that said the pay rate of Rp22453.90 was more than enough to live on in both comfort and luxury. Those articles, written for Western readers who would be drawn to the number and not the value. In truth, the rupiah was crumbling, and this factory’s pay rate of Rp99379.29 worked out to $6.45 in American dollars. Below even the national minimum wage. Not enough to survive on, what with agriculture production still recovering from COVID-19 and stores raising their prices to maximize profits during shortages. More than 70 percent of Darmana’s meager pay went to food, and that was hardly a feast. Many working parents like her were half-starved so that their children and grandparents could eat. Debt mounted, and since the company that owned the factory also controlled the banks, there was nowhere to go but further down the poverty hole.

  Darmana had hoped that by forming a small union and blockading the factory, the corporation fat cats would realize it was better to offer sensible—if small—raises rather than lose money from production slowdowns. She’d sent carefully written letters to the executives and foremen, pleading for those raises. Not a lot. The workers did not want to leave their jobs, but was it too much to ask for money to live? To put enough food on the table? To buy clothes for the children? To buy schoolbooks and to have enough for them to visit a clinic every now and then? It was so little to ask. Some of the celebrity-endorsed sneakers made in her factory sold for anywhere from $800 to $6,000 American dollars. Six thousand was three times as much as Darmana earned in a year working fourteen-hour shifts six days a week. Surely, the executives would find it in their hearts to offer a little more. Only a little.

  At first, it had been the factory manager yelling at her and the other workers to go back to work, promising to forgive and forget once the machines were running again. When that hadn’t worked—mainly because Darmana knew that retaliation would follow and told her coworkers that—the management sent strikebreakers. There were some minor scuffles, but many of her neighbors who’d come to watch the drama had cell phones. The strikebreakers were, too, clearly villains, and if it got onto social media, then corporate stocks would drop.

  Darmana was not deeply educated, but she was savvy. She understood the power of social media. She had her cousin’s cell phone, and she raised it as the corporate man and the tougher-looking man in black approached her.

  They came right up to her and stopped only a few feet away, with the one who looked like a soldier a pace back. The corporate man stopped so close that Darmana could have reached out and touched him. She tried to stop the hand holding the cell phone from trembling, but she was too frightened. It was hard to say who frightened her more—the corporate man who could fire her and everyone else here, or the man in black.

  There was something awful about him. He was taller than the well-dressed man and much taller than she was. He looked to be over six feet, with broad shoulders and a powerful build. A white man with maybe a bit of West African blood. Handsome, in his way, except for the eyes. They were as cold and dead as stones.

  The corporate man broke the silence. He spoke Indonesian with an accent that she could not place. Not American. Maybe German? She wasn’t sure.

  “My name is Michael Augustus Stafford,” he said. “Your name is Darmana, right? You are the leader of this little protest.”

  It wasn’t a question, so Darmana merely waited for more.

  “What you are doing is hurting business,” said Michael Augustus Stafford. “It’s hurting your friends and coworkers. Surely, you understand that you’ve already lost much in wages that you’ll never be able to recoup. How is that helping any of you?”

  “You’re paying starvation wages,” she said, trying to keep fear out of her voice.

  “No one here is fainting from hunger,” said Stafford. He managed a smile that showed very good teeth. His breath, however, stank of cigars and whiskey.

  Darmana didn’t even bother to reply to that. Everyone who worked at the factory was stick thin. She had two children at home, the oldest of whom would soon leave school at age twelve to work right alongside her mother. Her daughter told her that she dreamed they were all dead and the town was filled with pecong—ghosts who were stuck in their shrouds. Only the factory was a big shroud in which all of the ghosts worked forever and ever.

  Stafford shook his head. “Darmana, you need to listen to reason. No, let me change that—you need to think about what’s best for you and your children. For your elderly mother and your grandparents. You need to think about what’s best for all of the people here—and their families. What good can possibly come of you causing trouble and keeping the others—your own friends and neighbors—from earning their pay? You see, it’s not the management who are picking your pocket. Hardly. We provide jobs for everyone. No, it’s you and people like you who complain even when you’re well off. It’s people like you who are never satisfied and certainly never grateful.”

  “Gra
teful to be slaves?” she fired back. The camera she held above her head felt like it weighed ten tons. Beads of sweat ran down her arm.

  “Grateful to have work,” corrected Stafford. “Grateful to have steady employment at a time when the whole world is reeling from the global financial meltdown. Hundreds of millions around the world, even in Europe and America, are still out of work. But you have work. And here you are, loitering, idle, causing problems, making false accusations against the people who provide those jobs to you. People you should praise. Instead, you berate them and make false accusations. You concoct blog posts filled with lies, exaggerated claims, and clips from fake news sources.”

  “It’s not fake,” snapped Darmana. “I’ve worked here all my life. I know. Everything I’ve said in letters and on blog posts is the truth.”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head and smiling like a shark. “Lies. Nothing but lies from an ungrateful slut.”

  Darmana, long used to insults, didn’t flinch, but instead gave him a smile of her own. Angry and triumphant. “Go ahead and insult me,” she crowed, shaking the cell phone. “Every word you just said is going out to people all over the world.”

  “No,” said Stafford, “it is not.”

  It took her a few seconds to process that. “What?”

  “Look at your phone,” he said. Still a smiling shark.

  She did. Instead of a link to a YouTube channel run by a political blogger in Jakarta, the screen read: NO SIGNAL. She glanced around and saw a few other people in her group, and many among the crowd of townsfolk were also frowning at their phones.

  “It’s called a jammer,” said Stafford. “Not a word of what we’ve said here has gotten out to anyone. And nothing those busybodies in this rabble”—he jerked his head toward the crowd behind him—“has gotten out. Not one word.”