I transferred the video to the local v-cast generator to watch the full recording. A whine and a flash of light preceded the formation of a brown-skinned man dressed in a white lab coat. He was tall, in his early seventies. Sparkling proto-matter swirled around his body, completing his form with a white beard. Despite his apparent age, he still stood straight and strong. He took his thick glasses, rubbed them clean, and spoke into his recorder.
“Results for experiment Omega-221 are still inconclusive. Specimens three and four continue to exhibit aberrant behavior,” said the v-cast projection of Dr. Okono. His voice was deep and resonant, with a charisma and authority that demanded attention. “All tasks given to them in isolation are carried out perfectly. However, a task has a failure rate of 34.4% if it’s assigned when they are in close proximity…”
“Sir…” Sasha gasped.
“What is it?” I whispered.
“My tracking sensor activated,” she replied. “The wisp we encountered in your apartment…it is here.”
Whirling around, I spotted the faceless digital creature emerge from the far wall. Sasha’s advanced warning spoiled its sneak attack. Feeling protective, Sasha manifested her blue-suited body in front of the intruder. The v-cast generator strained and dispensed more proto-matter to compensate. For a split second, Dr. Okono’s form blinked out and then reappeared.
Slinking forward, the jagged mouth of the wisp opened to speak. “Tactical mistake number one: you came in person.” The voice was condescending and rough like gravel. It was also familiar to me. Hairs across my body bristled. A sensation of getting doused by ice water shocked my nervous system. It was the primal fight or flight response that shouted for you to run away from a dangerous predator.
“Spenner?” I asked.
“Right here,” Spenner replied, this time speaking from his own mouth. I realized he was in the room, standing in the shadows of the laboratory entrance. “Tactical mistake two, you've brought your AI's source code in your wrist-com.” I spun around to face him. As he walked toward me, I wasn't surprised to see him beaming with an amused expression. “Of course I knew you had Sasha with you during our bayou mission. I can't wait to unspool her upper logic.”
“That's not happening,” I shot back with a raised voice. His eyes narrowed to cruel-looking snake-slits.
“You had a chance to be safe in the Aerie, but you had to play the hero,” he mocked. “Tomoe took a fancy to you, Jonah. She promised the boss that she could turn you. But since she couldn’t contain you her way, the boss said I could take you out my way.”
Spenner’s overconfidence caused him to let an important clue slip. Now I knew he was in league with Tomoe and another boss. Why did they need me taken out? My instinct told that they wanted Vanessa. I was collateral damage.
Before either of us said another word, Dr. Okono's virtual projection spoke. As a simple recording, it was ignorant of the stand-off. It fulfilled my previous request to recite the doctor’s log.
“I am concerned that Exception 366 may be a mitigating factor in the aberration,” said Dr. Okono. “Specimen 3 and 4 were married before transitioning into shade service. They were brought to my attention when they both left their assigned jobs spontaneously to reunite later at a restaurant that they owned together in life…much to the consternation of the current patrons…”
No one blinked as Dr. Okono’s projection walked between us. My mind flipped through echelons like shuffling a deck of cards. Spenner remained still as statue, cool, unflappable. His wisp paced, eager to strike against Sasha.
“Experiment 43A is now testing whether long-term neurochemical memory history interferes with serum 43.5B.” Dr. Okono said, concluding his report. His virtual recording lingered, wandering away to inspect his machines.
“Who’s your boss?” I asked. “Maybe we could work something out? I just want Vanessa.”
“That's a coincidence, so does my employer,” Spenner snapped. “Unfortunately for you, she's gotten you into a heap of trouble. And since you came here, you already know too much. A shame. You were pretty good, too. I could have used you for an upcoming job. Now you are the job.”
The wisp jumped first. Its claws extended out, intent on raking me. Sasha leapt without hesitation, and knocked the creature back with a vicious flying kick. The two locked in melee contest that once again included a vast series of code attacks against their programming systems.
My former partner waited. His trained eyes analyzed every part of me, dissecting my strengths and weaknesses. It was like staring into the eyes of a hungry tiger, biding its time to pounce.
“Since you took so long to get here, I had time to think of the perfect way to kill you,” Spenner hissed. “You might remember an old friend of ours…” With alarming speed, he gestured and activated his crimson wrist-com. A black and red halo flared over his right hand and the room exploded with noise. For a brief moment, the projection of a bladed, red key flashed across his console. It was a Crimson Gate echelon, a class of deadly programs developed by the military for the Korean Cyber War. Peace treaties and international law outlawed that code years ago, though it appeared Spenner missed that memo. Palpable fear gripped me. This was tier-9 programming that most hackers would never fathom.
At first, nothing happened except my heavy perspiration. Then I heard a shatter. The sixth holding tank with the smoky glass became a rainstorm of broken shards. A tall shape emerged from the debris. It was a shade, but unlike any I had ever seen. At almost seven feet, the shade towered over everyone. Its decayed, sore-covered head bulged with glowing green veins. The creature's red-hued eyes, the color of Spenner’s wrist-com, scoured the room, then fixed onto me. I felt a chill when I recognized the disfigured face.
It was Jebediah. The same ex-Louisiana mayor that Spenner and I had reaped days before. Judging from its enlarged muscles and increased height, I surmised that its serum had been spiked by some new formula. More worrisome, Jeb seemed to be under the direct control of Spenner. Somehow he had hacked Jebediah's serum, removed the safeguards, and turned it feral.
“Jeb, tear his damn head off,” Spenner growled, pointing at me.
The creature let out a gurgling roar of approval. This was no longer a docile worker bound by the typical do-no-harm serum protocols. It was a monster unleashed, rushing toward me with gnashing sharp teeth and outstretched clawed hands.
Adrenaline and combat muscle memory drove me to swift action. My hand pulled, aimed, and fired my grav-gun. Two bullets struck Jebediah's chest before the creature closed half the distance between us. The impacts slowed, but did not stop his charge.
“Your girl got you killed,” taunted Spenner over Jebediah’s pained howls. “She took the wrong client. Learned too much.” He was trying to distract me so his monster could finish me off. Hate welled up within me, but my instincts knew better. Two more bullets struck the shade, one in each knee, knocking him down but not out of the fight.
With his creature slowed, Spenner tapped his wrist-com. My device blazed to life as well and we prepared to confront each other in the digital battlefield. Like two chess players, we maneuvered, feinted, and attacked the other to gain control over the v-cast generator. With a flick of my fingers, I launched an access denial hack. He countered. Then he retaliated with a nasty virus to steal away Sasha’s share of the proto-matter reserves. This forced me to invoke a deflection program. It worked, causing his wisp to fade for a moment until Spenner compensated and restored his AI. Then I attempted a lockout virus against his own wrist-com and he brushed that off with a simple hand wave. Like two dueling sorcerers, we launched the equivalent of technological spells at the other. While Spenner held off my attacks, Jebediah stood up and limped toward me.
Necessity demanded another strategy, since bullets only deterred the shade. An idea to invoke a harmless costume echelon, rather than a larger brute attack, came to mind. It was such a simple program that most automatic defenses ignored it as non-threatenin
g. Following my program specifications, the v-cast generator whined. It formed a shimmering, illusory field around my body that made me look like Spenner. Then the v-cast emitted proto-matter to make him look like me. The switch provoked a grunt from Jebediah and slowed him to a stop.
“Attack him,” I growled, with a passable impression of a sandpaper voice.
“No, no, attack Jonah!” Spenner screamed. For the first time in our conflict, Spenner showed an expression of surprise. Then his face twisted with anger. Despite his attempt to undo the deception, Jebediah growled and sprinted toward him.
Punching sigils on his wrist-com, Spenner executed another dangerous echelon. Red light covered his gun. The crimson, bladed key shimmered over his display. An implement of pure death emerged from his deadly code repertoire. It was as the assassin echelon granting him superior marksmanship. He demonstrated the program’s ruthless efficiency by firing three bullets into the shade’s only vulnerable points. The first bullet severed the brain stem. Precise like a surgeon’s knife, the second and third shots obliterated the sustaining adrenal glands. He put the creature down rather than let me control it.
Before he shot the fourth bullet, I leaped behind a tall computer tower. Despite my cover, Spenner’s computer-guided aim would reveal a way to exploit its structural weakness. To compensate, my hand wove a defensive echelon, drawing proto-matter from the v-cast generator to create a floating shield. This saucer-shaped buffer absorbed a bullet streaking for my head, shattered, and reformed in time to stop the next projectile. Each shot drained the proto-matter more, depleting the tank’s reserves faster than the reclaiming filters could reclaim the energized matter. He would break through.
Reloading faster than I expected, Spenner unloaded another swift volley of four bullets that ripped through my defenses. The last bullet tore through my Achilles tendon. Rolling over with pain, I caught sight of Sasha. The wisp had pinned her to the floor. We were losing. With my leg wounded and pool of defensive shields dwindling, I weighed my options. Spenner would accept no surrender.
Dr. Okono walked behind me, reciting numeric results of several experiments. This sparked an idea to cover my escape. Hacking the lab’s records, I summoned all the project logs at once. The v-cast generator complied, reclaiming Sasha’s proto-matter to create four different Okono phantoms. As she dematerialized and returned to my wrist-com, the doctor’s projections appeared in front of Spenner. With the distractions blocking his view, I sprinted toward the window like my life depended on it…because it did.
The maneuver worked as Spenner's next three bullets struck my shield, ricocheted off course, and shattered the glass wall. A million shards glittered in the moonlight, highlighting my only desperate exit. With little choice, I leapt through the jagged window and into the night. As gravity wrenched me down, my body spun at the start of free-fall. Cold midnight air burned my lungs, disorienting me.
“The car!” I screamed to Sasha over the wind’s roar. My watering eyes blinked to focus, trembling fingers struggled to tap the across the display of my wrist-com, searching for the car’s control echelon.
“Already en route, sir. I will catch you,” she replied, her volume and concern raised. Whipping wind prevented me from grinning, but her words sparked hope of survival. Gleaming grander than Apollo’s sun chariot, my flying car's headlights grew large and flared through the darkness. For that fraction of a second, hope renewed. I was going to make it out alive.
My wrist-com’s display warned me that the shield program ended after absorbing a torrent of Spenner’s bullets. I saw him looking down, peering over the edge, and pointing his weapon at me. He had an unobstructed line of sight. At that moment, I knew his assassin echelon pinpointed my vital spots. For him, this shot would be easier than shooting a wall twenty feet in front of him. For me, it was a certain death sentence. With no remorse or hesitation, he sent bullets through my femoral, abdominal aorta, vertebral, and carotid arteries. The last shot perforated my heart. Agony ripped throughout my body but the rushing air stole my screams. My bright, red contrails streamed behind me. Searing pain overloaded my entire nervous system with panic-filled signals of impending failure. Moments later, the agony ended after thirty-two floors when I smashed through the roof and into the hovering mustang. With my spine snapped from the impact, no feeling registered below my neck.
“Go...” I rasped, maybe. It was unclear whether the words came out or if they echoed in my head.
“Jonah!” Sasha cried. “Please…please remain conscious, I am diverting our route to New York General Hospital. Stay with me, for her sake, for love’s sake. Do not go gentle into that--”
Blood clouded my eyes. Sasha's voice sounded so distant to me. Words foamed on my lips but found no release. Friends, lovers, dreams, all beckoned down a long kaleidoscope-corridor of pulsing light. Was it my dying brain shielding me from the inevitable, or the hereafter?
“Stay with me!” she urged, panic rising in her sweet voice. Paralyzed, I could only roll my eyes to the side, watching the buildings rise and fall. We hurtled like a comet, driving with such abandon that the cityscape blurred, becoming a smeared collage painting of Manhattan. To avoid collisions, Sasha hacked the traffic net and pushed limos and taxis away to lower air lanes.
“Hold on…” she wept. This caused a complex feeling of pride and sadness to swell. “Please…for me, sir.”
The moon chased us through the window. Bloody stars filled my eyes. Then, a familiar voice sounded inside the car. It was a hallucination. What else could it be?
“Sasha, it is too late for the hospital,” said a soft, almost musical voice. “Divert your location to us. We will clear all road lanes. Come now. It is his only chance.
CHAPTER 15
Revelations
“Violence does, in truth, recoil upon the violent,
and the schemer falls into the pit which he digs for another.”
- Excerpt from “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes”
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
>> DATE: The present day.
>> TIME: 8:40 AM.
>> LOCATION: IRS Headquarters.
An ice pick struck my temple, or at least it felt like it. Retelling the events of Spenner's final assault to the interrogators made my wounds ache. I felt a burning in my nose and when I went to rub it, I found my fingers bloodied. There was a long pause in the interrogation room. Erasmus and Barnaby sat in silence, like they were waiting for me to say ‘the end’.
“So that's everything I remember up until now,” I said. “I don't know how I survived that last encounter with Spenner. He must have emptied six clips into me before Sasha rushed me to the hospital. I'm lucky to be alive.”
Time slowed. Barnaby chewed his lip, bowed his head, and stroked his temple as if trying to dislodge the right words to say. Erasmus folded his hands. A genuine look of sadness creased his face. Something was wrong.
“My--my son,” he spoke, the words choking in his throat. “I am sorry to tell you that you did not survive after all.”
I laughed. Making light of terrible news was the mind’s first line of defense to preserve sanity. The two men remained silent, exchanging nervous, guilty looks of pity. After reading their reactions, my instincts ordered me to grapple with the inevitable truth. This realization quickened my pulse. The room swayed. All air escaped my lungs. I gasped and gulped like a fish out of water. The pounding of my heart matched the intensity of the jackhammer inside my temples. I tried to stand, to run, but in my weakened state I toppled. Before falling, Director Barnaby jumped up to catch me.
“Doctor Bellows!” yelled Barnaby, bringing a team of doctors and nurses into the room carrying medicines and scanners. “Give him another treatment.”
“This--this is new territory here, Director,” stammered Dr. Bellows. He was a heavyset, older man, with a thick gray beard. He wore an antique stethoscope around his neck. “I--I don't know how he will respond to the multiple doses…it may cause--
”
“We can’t lose him,” Barnaby interrupted. “Do it now.”
A thin, black-haired nurse steadied me while the doctor readied a fluid-filled pack into an intravenous delivery device. A needle pricked my arm and green-colored fluid dripped into my veins. What started as an uncomfortable prickling sensation burned like acid within my blood vessels. I screamed so loud my voice went hoarse. Muscle spasms wracked my body, forcing the doctor and the nurse to restrain me with thick straps.
“The pain will pass, my son,” soothed Erasmus in a calm, musical tone. He reached to touch my shoulder. “Have faith. This treatment will save you.” He murmured archaic Latin words of prayer while a grand mal seizure caused my body to writhe. After the fit passed, my eyes fluttered and opened.
“Vitals are stabilizing,” reported a nurse. “I'm seeing a strong blood pressure and normal heart sinus rhythm.”
“What…have you…done to me?” I wheezed.
“We brought you back from the brink,” Barnaby responded. “At great expense to the American taxpayer.”
“H-how? What…did you inject me with?”
Another doctor, a younger red-bearded man, stepped forward. His eyes twinkled with eagerness, like a passionate science professor about to start a lecture.
“It’s incredible. You’ve made history. You see, your body metabolized a novel, synthesized ribonucleic--”
“We had to use the serum on you, Jonah,” Barnaby interjected, raising his hand to silence the excited doctor.
At first, my mouth opened to yell obscenities, but shock froze my voice.
“It was the only way to preserve your life,” added Erasmus. “It was not your time, Jonah. You are still needed here.”
“The serum?” I shouted. “What the hell have you done?” I tried to rip the IV needle out of my arm, but the nurse and doctor held me. Barnaby wrestled me back into bed without much effort. He gave a stern look at me not to resist again. Learned helplessness took over and I slumped back.
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