Flesh Blood Steel

by David Jones

  But it was. Even as Jake spoke the words a flood of legal precedent washed over his consciousness. Congress had added several revolutionary amendments to the constitution in landslide votes shortly after the ISIL-European war broke out. These articles expanded upon those recognizing corporations as citizens, yielding to them the right to wage war in America’s name under federal direction. These rights led to sovereignty mandates, allowing corporations to deem foreign soil as personal property in trust as citizens of the U.S.

  “It’s like land rights in a feudal system,” Jake said as the cybrid supplied him with examples. “The king—in this case the government—rules all, but lets his subjects, corporations, run their lands as they see fit.”

  Calvin shrugged, looking confused. “If you say so. Point is, most cities hire out their police forces from two or three of the big security firms, and Cymobius is the biggest. If you called the cops out here, you’d get the guys we just microwaved back at the prison.”

  “There were cops in New York,” Jake said.

  “Yeah, in the city. Most of the old precincts are dead though—sold out to the highest bidders. The few still there are just relics.”

  “So there won’t be cops waiting for us outside this compound?”

  Calvin shrugged. “Dunno, but if they are, they won’t be on our side.”

  They were approaching the front gates, which consisted of two reinforced guard shacks painted Cymobius blue with a set of steel poles jutting up between them like teeth. The poles were big around as Moore’s neck and spaced maybe two feet apart. Even with a heavily armored truck going this fast there was no way they could crash through them.

  Two guards, rifles raised, opened fire from behind the gate. Rounds sparked off the hood and windshield, but seemed to do little more than leave dings and paint scrapes behind.

  “Anya,” Moore said.

  “Not yet.”

  They barreled a hundred feet closer.

  “Drop those poles!” Moore shouted.

  Anya tapped her pad. “Done!”

  The silver blockade dropped from sight just in time for their vehicle to pass over. They clipped one guard’s foot as they passed. He had been slow to notice his protective gate slipping into the ground. He screamed and went spinning off into the side of the guard shack.

  Anya tapped her pad, and Jake watched in horrified fascination via her mirror as the gate snapped back into place behind them. The poles snagged one of their pursuers, a black SUV. Its rear wheels left the road with a shriek of metal on metal, parts spraying from beneath it across the asphalt, sending up sparks like tiny comets.

  The remaining three pursuers slammed into the barricade or one another at nearly the same instant. Nothing caught flame, let alone exploded as it might in a movie, but all three vehicles were mangled beyond operating specs.

  “Good work,” Moore said, giving Anya a nod.

  Everyone in the back exchanged high fives and exultant congratulations. Everyone except Jake.

  “What’s wrong?” Calvin asked.

  Jake shook his head. Every person in those cars had most likely died, or at least suffered ghastly injuries. And for what? Doing their jobs? It wasn’t like they were enemies on a battlefield, though Moore and his people seemed to view them that way.

  Had Jake made a terrible mistake rescuing these people? He looked at Anya. She was staring at him from the front seat.

  “You’re broadcasting,” she said.

  Crouching to avoid bumping his head on the truck’s metal roof, Jake shuffled forward to lean into the cab. Bullet proof glass reinforced with a wire mesh separated it from the rear compartment. Anya had opened a square portal in the barrier.

  “What do you mean, broadcasting?”

  “It’s your Spearcast. It’s a signal your cybrid sends to Cymobius. It tells them you’re okay and gives locational updates.”

  “That thing’s operational?” Moore said, eyes rolling up to the roof. “Turn that junk off.”

  “I can’t,” Anya said. “We don’t have the cranial plug.”

  “You got to go then,” Moore said to Jake. “I’m not having those pricks track us because of you.” He started slowing, looking for a place to stop on the side of the road. They were traveling what looked like a country road in any part of the states, faded lines in the middle and forest to either side.

  “No, keep going,” Anya said. “He can shut it off himself.”

  “How?” asked Jake and Moore at the same time.

  “I’m not sure,” Anya said. “But I know cybrids do it all the time, otherwise people besides Cymobius could track them. I think it’s just a matter of ordering the cybrid to do it.”

  Jake blinked at her. “I have no idea how to do that. I didn’t know I could order it to do anything. Far as I can tell it just pushes thoughts into my head.”

  “Then push back,” Moore said. “We need that thing off yesterday.”

  “He’s right,” Anya said. “Push back.”

  Jake looked down at the floor. He was aware of his cybrid, that was certain. The thing never shut up.

  Shut up, he thought.

  Nothing happened. And why should it? People thought all sorts of crazy stuff all the time, often without consciously trying. If the cybrid reacted to that sort of nonsense, it would burn itself out trying to keep up. No. Controlling the thing had to be something different—something nontrivial and yet contained within his head.

  “Any luck?” Anya asked. Her tone belied her calm demeanor.

  “Give me a minute,” Jake said.

  “We might not have a minute,” Moore said. “I can’t believe they haven’t targeted us with drones or else a helicopter yet.”

  “They can’t,” Anya said, “I grounded them.”

  “Did I ever mention you’re worth every penny I pay you?”

  “You don’t pay me.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Guys, can you hold it down for a second?” Jake asked. “Kinda trying to map my own brain here.”

  “Sorry,” Anya said.

  “It’s not working anyway.” Jake shook his head in frustration. “Do you think it could be a set of things I do like blink my eyes in a specific pattern or hop on one foot?”

  Anya shrugged.

  “I thought you were a freaking cybrid expert.”

  “For someone outside Cymobius’s programming nexus, I am. But I don’t know everything. Why don’t you ask the cybrid?”

  “Why don’t I ask the cybrid? That’s...brilliant.” Jake had been doing that all day without realizing it, hadn’t he? Whenever he wanted a schematic of the prison cells the information had flowed into his mind like mercury. When he needed to judge how to throw a kick or a punch to stop an opponent, the precise angle of attack and force to deliver had been there in his head.

  Okay, he thought, I need some information. How do I shut off this Spearcast thing? And if I do, will it hurt me, uh, us?

  And suddenly he knew.

  The cybrid was a mix of organic and manufactured components wrapped around the top of his spinal cord where it intersected the brain. Its broadcast system, Spearcast, was not much different in function from a cell phone antenna and rig.

  And it had a switch.

  Suddenly self-conscious—every eye in the truck was on him now—Jake reached behind his head to the fleshy part of his neck beneath his right ear and felt some sort of nodule there. It was flat and gave him no discomfort. In fact, he wouldn’t have noticed it at all without his cybrid’s assistance. He pressed down, heard something click in his head, and knew that the Spearcast was no longer transmitting.

  “That did it,” Anya said, peering at her computer.

  “Yes, but it also switched off my access to the internet,” Jake said. Though his cybrid continued to feed him a barrage of information about his surroundings, his body state, and the people in his immediate vicinity, its information had diminished significantly.

  “Better that than having Cymobius track us d
own again,” Anya said.

  “Speaking of tracking us,” Moore said, “we need a new ride. I’m not getting on the highway with this thing. Too conspicuous.”

  “I think that can be fixed,” Anya said, already tapping away at her pad.

  “That’s what I like to hear,” Moore said.

  THE NEW RIDES TURNED out to be two huge SUVs the group stole from a car dealership. Anya overrode their security systems and ordered them to self-start before Moore even entered the lot. From there, stealing them was a simple matter of transferring everyone from the armored truck to the SUVs. It took less than two minutes.

  Jake considered leaving then. He had no more desire to steal cars than he had to fight and possibly kill people. But where would he go? He was exhausted, hungry, and alone. His mother was gone. So were all his friends from school. It wasn’t like he could track one of them down and expect any help. What was he going to say?

  Hi, don’t know if you remember me, but I’m Jake Harris. We knew each other back in high school, you know, thirteen years ago. Could I crash with you for a while?

  Jake followed Anya and Calvin into the second SUV. It really wasn’t much of a decision.

  The sky grew dark as they sped along a highway hemmed in on both sides by thick forest. Jake reclined on a bench seat, an arm over his eyes, the engine’s hum enticing him to sleep. But sleep wouldn’t come. His mind kept turning back to his mom on the day of the accident. She had been so happy at the prospect of spending an afternoon with him after he had convinced her of the idea. But if he had just waited, let her go to work while he went to school, and celebrated her birthday afterward, she would be alive today.

  He indulged that fantasy, picturing himself calling her now. Maybe she wouldn’t have heard from him in years. The man he had become, this Harris character, didn’t seem like the type who would have called his mother on a regular basis. He imagined her pressing the phone to her ear, surprised but perhaps also delighted at hearing the sound of her son’s voice after so many years.

  And if she were alive, he could go to her. Of course things wouldn’t be the same. The world had changed, and there were people after him, powerful people. But he would go, because no matter what happened, no matter what he did, Renni Harris would always be his mother. Jake could always take his troubles to her.

  Only now he couldn’t.

  Jake rubbed his eyes, glad of the darkness so that no one would see the dangerous cybrid crying.

  “Hey, you okay?” Anya asked. She had taken the seat next to him, no doubt wanting to show Moore she was taking her responsibility for Jake to heart.

  “Why did Cymobius send me after you?” Jake asked.

  “What?”

  “After Rudd captured us, he said you were Harris’s target in New York. Why? What do they want with you? How does a corporation that size even know who you are?”

  Anya sat quiet a moment. The darkness hid her emotions from Jake, but he could tell this was a contemplative sort of quiet. She was trying to decide what she should reveal.

  “They know me because I’m a hacker. I’ve been infiltrating their systems since I was ten. Problem is, I wasn’t so good at covering my tracks back in the day. They had me sent to juvenile detention for a year when I was twelve. That’s how they know me.”

  “But why are they after you now?” Jake asked. “Did they want you dead? Why else send a cybrid?”

  “I don’t know,” Anya said. Her tonal inflection told Jake she was telling the truth.

  “Well, I’m glad I didn’t kill you.”

  “I’m glad I didn’t kill you.”

  Jake looked around in the dark at his fellow travelers. No one was paying him or Anya any particular attention. In fact, most of them were asleep. He wanted to do the same, he was more exhausted than he had ever been, but not yet.

  “Can you do something for me?” he asked Anya in a low voice.

  “Maybe.”

  “Can you look up my mother on the internet?”

  She nodded and tapped the pad in her lap, which glowed to life.

  Jake winced, expecting someone to complain about the light even though Anya had the thing’s brightness set low. But no one even roused. They were all as fatigued as him.

  “May I?” Jake asked.

  Anya looked reluctant in the glow of the computer screen, but nodded and handed him the pad.

  Thirteen years hadn’t seen the end of Google. Jake started there, researching his mother’s name in conjunction with obituaries and accident reports in Lucas Falls, South Carolina.

  Renni Harris wasn’t a common name. Jake found a video about his mother’s death at the second link listed. He watched it, the volume low, in fixed horror.

  A reporter, all clean-cut hair, tie, and business casual slacks stood before the mangled remains of what had been his mom’s Civic. It looked like it had been through the world’s largest combination trash compactor and flame thrower.

  Reporter: Monday morning’s intense fog claimed the lives of two locals in a car crash. It happened here at the intersection of Murphy and Fairfax street, taking the lives of Renni Harris, a thirty-nine year old waitress, and her son, Jacob Harris, a sixteen year old student at Wallace Greg High School. The smashup occurred when Johnathan Ramsey, a local truck driver on his way home from a weekend delivery to Cincinnati, misjudged the intersection and ran through the stop sign, hitting Mrs. Harris’s car.

  Jake watched an interview with an ashen-faced Johnathan Ramsey. The bearded man was crying, obviously not coping well with the deaths he had caused.

  “You and me both,” Jake whispered.

  “What was that?” Anya asked.

  “Nothing.” Jake searched through three more articles from local television stations, but found no further information besides obituaries for him and his mom. His claimed he was buried at Oakhurst Cemetary in Lucas Falls. “Do you have any idea who took me from the wreck?”

  “No,” Anya whispered. “Someone from the government, I guess.”

  “If I search for myself, you think I could find a record of my time in the military?”

  “I doubt it. And if you go punching your name or social into a search engine right now, it’ll be like shooting off a flare for Cymobius. They’ll track us down in minutes.” Anya lowered her voice. “Letting you search for your mother was bad enough.” Gently, she took the tablet from his hands.

  Jake wanted to keep it, but he saw the sense in her words. Even thirteen years ago, large companies had used bots to monitor internet traffic and pinpoint user locations. He could only imagine things had gotten easier for them, considering all that Anya and Calvin had said about changes in the world.

  Jake shook his head. He had more questions, not just about his mother, but the state of the world, his place in it, everything really. And yet, in light of the cold report confirming his mom’s death, those questions seemed paltry. He couldn’t muster enough interest to pose them.

  Instead, he turned his back to Anya without another word, and fell almost instantly into a fitful, jarring, and yet largely unremembered series of dreams filled with loss and heartache.

  Chapter 11

  Error

  He woke to the sound of jets.

  “Where are we going?” Jake asked.

  Moore had parked their SUV at a passenger pickup point next to the curb at La Guardia airport. He stood on the sidewalk tapping on a phone he had bought at a convenience store on the way. A river of electric cars streamed past, alternately disgorging or taking on travelers. The sign above the nearest glass and steel entrance read: International.

  “Paris,” Anya said.

  By the looks on their faces this was news to most of the team as much as to Jake. Their faces brightened and they shared smiles all around.

  “Are you serious?” asked one of the guys in the back. “We did it? We’re meeting Crown?”

  “Yeah. They think it best we get out of the country for a while—help out with some of the European cells.” />
  “Crown?” Jake asked.

  “Leaders in Dissolution,” Anya said, her voice low. “And before you ask, I don’t know much more than that. They organize our strikes globally, and keep us safe when they can. That’s all I know.”

  For a girl wound up in everything Dissolution, Anya sure seemed uninformed about the organization. But perhaps that was the way these Crown people wanted it. No one in the lower echelons, and far as Jake could tell these guys were the lowest of the low, knew enough to incriminate more than one or two people above them.

  Obviously, everyone in this group answered to Moore, but who were his bosses? Jake doubted Anya knew, and he felt weird asking. All his questions had begun to rouse suspicion in the other rebels. He could tell by the looks they gave him that his curiosity, his constant probing at the secrets behind their secret lives, was beginning to chafe. Jake understood their reasoning. They didn’t like him, probably with good reason—he may have killed friends of theirs in the past—and they weren’t comfortable with him gaining information about them and their comrades. And, yes, he may have saved them from Cymobius’s underground prison, but would any of them have been there if not for Jake?

  Rather than ask another question, Jake stared out the window at Moore. Though the big man stood slightly sideways to the SUV, Jake could see his lips moving as he spoke. As he focused, Jake found he could make out Moore’s voice over the din of traffic and passersby so long as no jets flew directly overhead.

  “Yes,” Moore said, “I understand that but—”

  A pause while someone on the other side of the line spoke. Jake was momentarily stunned at his own powers of perception. He could hear that other voice, electronically rendered tinny due to traveling through relay satellites and cell phone base stations and the exterior of their stolen SUV. Unfortunately, he couldn’t make out the words. Its cadence however told Jake that the speaker was admonishing Moore, ordering him to do something he didn’t like. And that voice had the authority to do so.

  “It’s a mistake.” Moore looked mulish. He stood with both hands shoved into his jeans pockets, shoulders hunched, eyes cast downward in concentration on the call. “I get that you see him as an asset, but what happens when that asset turns on you? I’ve seen first-hand what Harris can—”