“That’s right. We need to work together. We need to find out what you saw when you opened the victorious .meme file. I need you to listen to Anya. She’s a friend, Brian, you can trust her. She won’t hurt you. She won’t betray you. She only wants to help you remember.”
“Remember …” Brian said, and Dr. Ghoti, whose first name was definitely not Anya, patted Ani on the shoulder.
Ani moved aside.
And Dr. Ghoti began.
It took fifteen minutes of trial and error, question and answer, urging and pleading, calming and reassuring, but when the breakthrough occurred, it was pretty obvious it had happened.
The sleepy hesitancy of Brian’s responses dissipated and, although his eyes remained firmly closed and his body was still relaxed, he seemed more awake, more open to Dr. Ghoti’s questions.
As far as Ani could tell, the patient probing and questioning had been shots fired at an invisible target. Words had been chosen, fired at Brian’s sleeping mind, and their effects upon him were gauged, analyzed, and either included in, or excluded from, the next salvo. Dr. Ghoti was searching for a way in, but a way into what, Ani wasn’t completely sure. Still, it was fascinating to watch.
Ani had taken two YETI courses on cold reading—the human ability to appear to know what someone was thinking just by judging an individual’s responses to general questions and making educated guesses. It was the same trick that psychics and spiritualists used to convince their vulnerable victims that they had supernatural powers, while only possessing a reasonable grasp of human psychology and the fact that human minds remembered “hits” and forgot about “misses.”
Dr. Ghoti was doing something similar, but Brian’s sleepy replies made it hard to focus on anything with any authority. Some hacker-specific computer phrases seemed to get better results than anything else, but it was still like trying to see something through a thick fog. Just as you thought you got a glimpse of what you were looking for, the fog swirled and the image was lost.
But there had to be a trigger somewhere, a key that would unlock the files they wanted.
Files, Ani thought. What was it Dr. Ghoti had said? That the chemical was a biological filing manager?
Files.
The file.
“Can I try?” Ani asked, and when Dr. Ghoti nodded, she took a deep breath, played her hunch, and said, “victorious.meme.”
There was a moment where nothing happened. Ani thought that the long shot had been just that. She was far from being the expert here, and she didn’t know why she’d thought that she would be the one to make a breakthrough. But then she noticed that Brian’s eyeballs were rolling around under his eyelids—rapid eye movements.
And then Brian said, “Open file.” It was a good thing that Dr. Ghoti had remembered to set up the voice recorder, and turn it on, because a torrent of words followed.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
DID HE DIED?
It took a few seconds for Joe to recover from his initial feelings of fear and disgust, and then he peered back into the booth. It wasn’t any better the second time.
The thing lurking at the bottom of the booth could have been a person, but it could just as easily have been something else entirely. Joe really couldn’t tell. It had many of the characteristics of a human being—the same general shape, and many human features—but there was something broken, maybe damaged, something shrunken, maybe deformed about the figure.
Its eyes were sorrowful, wet and pleading and far too big for its head; its limbs were surely too spindly for its body. And there was an odd texture to the creature’s skin that unsettled Joe more than any of the other features had. It took him a little while to work out why. The skin was puckered and wet, like … like candle wax. Hot, dripping candle wax. It looked like the creature’s skin was melting.
Melting? Was that what was happening to the creature in the booth?
Joe knew that there was always a danger in building ideas upon shaky assumptions, but his mind was suddenly racing with the most hideous possibilities.
Assumption number one was that the booths were used for the control of the workers at this strange factory.
Assumption number two was inspired by the thought of melting wax. What if the thing in the bottom of the booth was what happened to factory staff who resisted the machines’ brainwashing? What if they were melted down and discarded? Was that even possible? What would you melt humans down with? Acid?
It was a horrible, disgusting thought—beyond insane—but it also had a grim ring of truth about it. With so much evidence of humanity’s inhumanity in the world, perhaps this was nothing more than the next immoral development in management efficiency: the protection of company secrets by silencing people who became a threat.
Joe stopped there. The idea made no sense.
All he could do was to continue gathering intelligence and hope that someone back at YETI could explain everything he was seeing.
Joe was just shooting some video of the creature when he heard footsteps outside the room. Multiple feet, trying to keep quiet. Sneaking up on him.
He shook his head. He’d escaped the people below by leaping up onto a gangway, but his discoveries up here had put all that on the back burner. He’d been so intent on discovering the secrets behind the doors up here that he’d completely forgotten about the possible dangers below. That was a rookie mistake, and one that he blamed on jetlag and adrenaline and uncertainty. But he knew the truth—it was bad tradecraft. He’d got himself too wrapped up in one thing and forgotten about the other.
And now there was someone outside the door. Either the zombie workforce had figured out how to use stairs—just because he had jumped his way up here didn’t mean it was the only way up—or security had been summoned. Whichever was the case, it meant his time here had just run out. All that was left was to get the heck out of here, find a signal, make contact with YETI, and hear what Abernathy wanted him to do next.
First, though: Escape.
There were doors at either end of the room, and it sounded like the forces were gathering outside the one he’d come in through, the one that led past the supercomputer and back to the walkway. He tried the other door and it opened without violence, a key, or a Resident Evil gimmick onto a storeroom full of racks, which in turn were full of clear plastic vats. Lots of them. They smelled weird—almost repulsive—a cloying mixture of damp and copper and salt. Inside, they held a reddish-pink semiliquid. There were no labels or printed descriptions on the vats, but Joe had no more time to examine them, because he heard the door between the computer room and the booth room had just been opened and slammed shut. His pursuers were on his heels.
Joe moved quickly through the storeroom, keeping low, staying quiet, and trying to remember every detail for later. He made it to the end of the racks and stopped. There was just a bare wall in front of him.
There was no door at the other end of the storeroom.
No door anywhere except the one he’d just come through.
He was trapped.
What was on the other side of the door? Best case scenario: security guards. Maybe the guy from the gate with a friend or two. Worst case: zombie staff with a new “kill” impulse programmed into their brains. And here he was: trapped, caged …
Joe realized that he was being self-indulgent, and pulled himself together. He’d been in worse situations. He couldn’t quite remember when, but it wasn’t panic that had gotten him out of previous scrapes. It was swift, definitive action unencumbered by doubt or fear.
The footsteps came closer, then stopped. Joe realized that they were checking the booths as they passed them.
It gave him a little bit more time.
He looked around the room. There were two ways out as far as he could see, and neither of them was particularly promising. Exit number one was through a grate and into a heating duct—a common enough action movie route, but an impractical and dangerous move in real life. Heating and ventilation ducts weren’t built to sup
port human weight or to allow passage of a human-sized form, and they often turned at such angles as to make movement through them impossible. And even if everything lined up perfectly to allow someone to crawl through a duct, the noise would attract anyone’s attention.
Which left exit number two: the door that his pursuers would be coming in through very soon.
And he realized that that was how exit number one would secure his escape.
Joe used a coin to loosen the slotted screws on the vent, then pried the vent from the wall, revealing the duct within. As he’d already predicted, the duct was narrow. A human would really have to squeeze to get inside.
A terrible strategy.
It would only result in disaster.
He dropped the vent grate to the floor, loudly.
He moved quickly to the door at the front of the room, and put his ear to the metal. The footsteps were getting even closer, and it didn’t sound like they were checking the booths now, just hurrying toward the racket he’d just made. It would only be seconds before the door would open.
Joe got himself in position.
The door swung in.
He prepared, physically and mentally.
He could only hear the two men that entered the room since his line of sight was blocked by the metal. They muttered to each other as they looked around the room, then they spotted the open grate and ran over to the duct.
He snuck out into the supercomputer room without them even noticing.
Until he slammed the door on them and made his escape.
He ran the length of the next room, taking the tuning fork out of his pocket and readying it for the next door by flicking its tines with his finger. As he placed the tuning fork on the door, the one at the other end of the room opened and someone shouted for him to STOP!
That wasn’t going to happen.
Once the sound controlled door opened, Joe raced across the computer room, slamming it behind him. He made it out the broken door and onto the walkway without even raising his pulse rate.
Below him, the activity of the factory continued as if nothing had happened. The workforce just carried on working, looking as if they had forgotten ever seeing him. Yes, he’d had a look around upstairs, but it had been only minutes, and people didn’t just forget things like that and get on with their day.
Hearing noises behind him, he climbed over the yellow barrier, holding on with only his fingertips, and tensed his body for the spring that would take him back to the shelving that he’d used to get to the walkway in the first place. The problem was, of course, that it wasn’t going to be easy. Leaping from the top of the shelves to the walkway had been easier because there had been railing and mesh to catch hold of. There was nothing to grab onto doing the jump in reverse except the top of the shelves. It would be all too easy to slip over the edge and plummet to the factory floor, all because he hadn’t quite stuck the landing and managed to claw himself a decent enough fingerhold.
If it weren’t for the fact that he could see absolutely no other choice, he would never have tried the jump.
He coiled his body like a spring, then pushed off from the walkway, turning in midair so his hands were reaching for the top of the shelving even as he fell through space. He kept his eyes on the landing spot and time seemed to slow down as his chip ran through the math and tried to give him the best possible chance of success. He’d hit pretty hard, and would have hardly any time to react. He needed his reflexes to be perfect. He needed to get it right first time.
One shot.
Preparation was key.
Adjustments in flight.
With his back straight and his legs bent, he traveled the last couple of feet and landed on the balls of his feet, arms outstretched for balance. He’d hit a bit harder than was optimum and his left hamstring complained, meaning he’d leaned a little to the left. On the ground, that would be fine. Stumbling was fine. But the width of the shelving was about a foot-and-a-half, which left so little margin for error that he couldn’t afford to err. Instead, he moved his weight to his right toes, then brought both heels down, legs still bent, absorbing the shock.
If it had been a dismount from the uneven bars at the Olympics, then he might have lost half a point. But the truth of the matter was he landed square, strong, and stable. Fifteen feet above the factory floor, on a surface narrower than a diving board.
Nailed it, he thought, but there was no time to rest. He lowered himself over the edge of the shelving and began climbing down. Someone shouted behind him from the walkway, and it was actually surprisingly good to hear another human voice, even if it was from a security guard who was hunting him. Better that than the awful silence that he’d been operating under since he’d arrived here.
And the voice spurred him on. He clambered down the shelves he had found easier on the way up. Finally, his feet touched the ground and he ran, no attempt at stealth, at concealment. Just running.
If the staff noticed him, they didn’t show any sign of it. No more patterned pursuit and concentric circle traps, now they were just working as if nothing unusual had happened that day. They simply ignored him, and that was as disturbing as having them all pursue him. How could they not look up as someone ran past them? How could they ignore things happening so close to where they stood?
Problems to work out another day. Now all that mattered was reaching the loading bay. Far from being a difficult journey through hostile territory, however, the trip was swift, uneventful and obstacle free.
Joe jumped down to the concrete outside and made his way to the side of the building, puzzled and disturbed in a way that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Was it that the whole escape was far too easy? Maybe. Again, he needed to concentrate on getting away, and then he could think about what it all meant, why it had all happened the way it had happened.
A quarter of the way down the side of the building he stopped. People were filtering into the space between the building and the fence up ahead, blocking off his exit. He didn’t need to turn around to know that there were people behind him, too, closing off any possibility of retreat.
He had been tricked.
Trapped.
Well, almost trapped.
He turned his back on the building and surveyed the fence. It stood twelve feet high, was made of chain link, and there were three strands of barbed wire on the top, angled out on concrete brackets. The brackets were part of the concrete posts that held the fence in place, spaced every twenty feet or so.
Joe looked left—a crowd of people blocking off the route back to the loading bays. He looked right—a crowd of people blocking off the route to the factory gates.
He stood in front of the fence, just next to the nearest concrete post, where the fence would be at its tautest and easiest to climb, reached out to the chain link for a handhold, lifted his left foot onto the fence, found a toehold and pushed up. He repeated the process with his right foot, then his left, and before long, he was at the top.
Now there was just the little matter of getting past the three strands of barbed wire.
Which was made easier by the fact the fence was designed to keep people out, not in. The concrete bracket sloped forward, away from Joe. The placement of the concrete upright also helped, and this was the other reason Joe had chosen his starting position carefully.
Still, climbing over three parallel lines of barbed wire is difficult, whichever way it faces. The wire could still snag clothing and skin, could still tear and gouge whatever it did snag and cause significant injury. Joe knew, though, that if there is something solid underneath the barbed wire—say a handy concrete bracket—it would be a lot less risky to cross. Moving his body to the right, he climbed upward, using the concrete bracket for a handhold. The barbs snagged his skin a couple of times, but the injury was minimal.
It took chip-assisted balancing to get both feet onto the bracket, one in front of the other, but having elite gymnast moves accessible just by thought certainly made life easier. J
oe stood up, tightrope walker style, and moved to the front of the bracket. Twelve feet of fence plus another two for the barbed wire equaled a 14-foot drop. With no way to turn around and dangle himself down to shorten the drop, fourteen feet definitely meant an injury of some kind. It might be minor, but odds were the fall would cause serious damage.
But there was the forest.
On the other side of the fence stretched the woodland he’d taken in on first arriving. From where he stood, he could see three branches that were reachable, two on one tree, one on another. The higher branch looked thicker and more likely to hold his weight, but it was also the farthest away.
Still, it wasn’t that far.
Joe jumped, grabbed the branch, held on, waiting until the shock had settled through his muscles, then dropped to the lower branch, dangled, then dropped to the forest floor.
On the other side of the fence, the people hadn’t moved. Now that he was safely over the fence, they turned away and went back into the factory.
And that was when Joe realized something.
They hadn’t been trying to catch him.
They had been directing him.
Channeling him.
Driving him.
Forcing him.
Forcing him into …
Forcing him into the woods.
Where they wanted him to go.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
O LONG JOHNSON
Abernathy frowned, reached over, and played the digital file again.
For the third time.
Brian’s voice, played back through the speakers.
“Ana mazi … emergency services were called … isolated community … attended … site of disturbance … Poiana Mazik … idespread communica … blackout … sub asediu … environmental … panic … village evacuated … Gaia … widespread … revenge … immune … first battle in war … turned … turned against … breaking news … enveloped … immunity … attack … terror … cordoned off … creatures … a spokesman said … just the beginning … what we’ve sown …”
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