Scavenger: A.I.: (Sand Divers, Book Two)

by Timothy C. Ward

  “Where’d you get the suit, scavenger?” the diver asked.

  “You want one?” Dixon asked. “We just came from Fort Pope. I can get you one.”

  “Fort Pope?”

  The diver’s excitement made Cool stop with a middle curtain picked up over his head. He turned his head flat to see the diver holding something in front of his face. Its white glow illumined his face and the spots of scabbed or bleeding pimples. “Marco, get over here,” he said into the device.

  Cool had to hurry before another person arrived. He crawled with his palms out to make sure he didn’t hit or land on anything in the dark that would give away his position, navigating between shadows of beds and small stacks of supplies.

  “What are you and Marco doing down here?” Carroll asked. Her calm tone spoke to a possibility of friendship.

  “We were sent by The Gov to set up his new hospital.”

  “Do you know how many people The Gov just killed in there?” Viky asked. “What are you doing following him?”

  “I don’t follow him because he’s a nice guy,” the diver said. “I’m not a nice guy. I survive and so does he. If any of you want to challenge me, I won’t hesitate to put a bullet between your ears, and then the friend on your right and your left, just for fun.”

  Cool made it to the end of the living spaces and lifted the bottom of a curtain. The diver was thirty feet of open space away, his back to Cool as he aimed his pistol at Dixon’s chest. All stood near an open doorway lit by the glow of multiple dive lights, watching the diver for his next move. Cool stuck his head out under the curtain, lifted the heavy cloth over his shoulder, and slowly rolled to his stomach. The cloth slid back to the concrete without the diver noticing.

  Dixon noticed, then quickly flicked his gaze back at the diver. “If I gave you a better chance of surviving, would you take it?”

  The diver laughed. “You got plans to fly to the moon? The Gov owns everything else. Your fancy dive suit won’t stop him.”

  Cool tiptoed to the wall traveling ahead to the tunnel the diver defended.

  “How far is he from here?”

  “How far? Well, first off, he’s about a thousand meters above us, and then maybe four days’ sail east. That doesn’t mean he can’t pick from the lot of a thousand nearby volunteers itching to cut your ear off just to make him smile.”

  Cool’s shirt scraped on the wall. The diver began turning to track the faint noise.

  “A thousand here?” Dixon pointed down. “Or up there?”

  “That’s all you get for free. I don’t have paper to write it out.”

  “I’m asking because there’s time for you to join the winning side.”

  Fifteen feet. Cool’s heartbeat thumped heavily inside his chest.

  The diver laughed. “I want crazy, I’ll ask Marco for a ghost story.” He waved them at the tunnel with his pistol.

  With the weapon no longer pointed at Dixon, Cool took his chance. “Hey!”

  Cool’s shout distracted the diver as Dixon chopped his wrist, releasing the man’s hold on the gun as he blocked the hand away with his other hand and drove a fist into the man’s sternum. The gun clacked on the floor. As the diver canted backward, Dixon grabbed his hand, yanked him forward, chopped him in the neck, swung an elbow into his jaw then turned and threw him over his shoulder. The diver landed hard on his back with a painful loss of air.

  Dixon let go and picked up the gun. “Good job, Cool.”

  A gun shot rang out.

  Dixon ducked, heaved the diver up to sitting and held his gun to the man’s head. “Enough! Throw your weapons on the ground and step out with your hands up or the next one goes in your partner’s head.”

  Dixon turned his head and found Cool, put a finger to his lips, cocked his head back where Cool had come from.

  Cool back stepped, testing if that was his job. Dixon nodded, and Cool retreated behind the wall, punching the air in excitement. Jeff was going to be so jealous. His little brother just got his first, official spy assignment.

  As long as Jeff didn’t die, this could be the best day of his life.

  23 – Star

  Star held her son tight to her stomach, daring anyone or thing to do their best to take him a second time.

  “That doesn’t have to be a dream.” The male voice spoke from the doorway behind her. Or beside her. She didn’t want to open her eyes and lose this dreamlike paradise. He sounded familiar. Danger hid within his gentle offer.

  “Please don’t let it,” she said.

  The room dimmed, as though a sand storm were rolling in, shading the light from the window. As the room grew darker, her hold on Fish weakened. Maybe not weaken, but a failure to grasp solid substance, as though his body were deflating into spirit. “No!”

  She opened her eyes and left the room of her past, waking in a new room on her back. The ceiling was lit by a single strip of white bulb. She lifted her hands. Plastic tips held each finger encased, with cords running from their backs to the table she laid on.

  The room was a collection of computer screens, lights, and trays for keyboards. No Fish.

  “No!”

  “Relax.” The male voice came from somewhere on the wall. Within the black panel. “You did well. Keep it up and I’ll let you be with Fish again.”

  “Fish is dead.”

  “Not necessarily.”

  What does that mean? She struggled to remember where she’d been prior to the room with Fish. The sand dune where she found Jet and the woman, Jules. The night Fish died. Where had she been before that? “Where am I? And what do you mean, not necessarily?”

  She tried to sit up. Her head felt like it had absorbed a bag of sand. She made it up to seated. A black dive suit covered her, its dive button engaged and humming.

  “You’ve been in an accident. I’m a doctor…of sorts, trying to fill the holes in the map of your brain.”

  “My brain? What happened?” That could explain why her head hurt. But she didn’t remember an accident.

  “You had tapped into a computer network so complicated that when an EM burst fried part of the system it caused brain damage. What you were doing…it was like sending a child out to the middle of the desert, powering up the sarfer, and letting him find his way back. Something went wrong that you weren’t prepared for. There was no firewall for your type of brain-to-network interface.”

  Star still had only the vaguest idea what he was talking about. There was a room. Monitors lit strange faces. Rush’s was one. Another had a thick, dark beard. Ned…something. Who’s on the other side of that voice?

  “What does this have to do with seeing Fish again?” she asked. “I know he’s dead.”

  “I’m not sure you’re ready for that, yet. You need time to heal. In that time, when you’re ready, I’ll explain.”

  “Explain what? He died two years ago. Nothing you can do will bring him back.”

  “I came back.”

  That voice…

  “Part of the wonder of what hurt your brain is the same wonder that can bring life to the dead. If you try hard enough, you may recognize my voice as belonging to a man you killed.”

  Star’s head throbbed through rivers of stretched-to-pain nerves, but the effort retrieved a haze of blue spears, thrown punches and a victim underneath. “Warren?” He’d brought them here. Or something. “How are you alive?”

  Poseidons. Under her command. She made them kill. Why? Fear blended with hatred, but how had she become so far gone as to kill? That ability remained close enough to grasp, if she wanted. She didn’t know what she wanted.

  “Just W now, but I was Warren before I evolved.”

  Evolved?

  “Your husband helped. He spilled my blood on a Poseidon. The nanobots in our blood—yours, Rush’s, and mine—can create a special link to the M-MANs technology.”

  M-MANs…nanobots…

  “Does that ring any bells?” W asked.

  She remembered a young man with blue eyes
and dark hair looking at her through a computer screen. “The M-MANs can’t harm you. I’ve programmed your nanobots that way.”

  “Sort of. Someone with blue eyes and dark hair said he programmed my nanobots not to be harmed by them?”

  “The Gov. My father. Yes. I need you to lie back down, close your eyes, and remember that moment.”

  Star hesitated. She’d killed this guy. Why should she obey him? “Tell me more about bringing Fish back.”

  “We don’t have lots of time. The Gov is on his way to kill all of us and take any chance you have of seeing Fish again.”

  That sounded like reason enough. All he was asking was for her to remember. She didn’t like the idea of not remembering, anyway.

  24 - Nedzad

  The undead cut a path for the dry ground between the growing pool and the wall.

  Nedzad split for the aisle between tankers, leaving the hissing spigot behind as he tracked down the closest one to turn and add to the flow. The nearing thumping of footsteps pushed him to choose the right half of the room. He didn’t have time to drain from all of the tankers. They’d have to follow him to the corner.

  Footsteps splashed behind him. They were betting on catching him over any threat he could pose with their feet wet.

  Good. Keep coming.

  One more row of tankers—two spigots to turn—before he reached the far wall.

  He swiped free the handles and glanced over his shoulder. Most had taken the dry way around—their strides matched tempo in an eerie synchronicity—but enough sprinted through the few inches of water to splash all on their way to feed.

  “They’re hungry, too,” W had said.

  Nedzad backpedaled building an EM charge from hands to elbows. When his back bumped the wall, he threw backward punches over his shoulders. His fists turned the concrete into mud, quickly sucking up to the elbows. He halted his charge, letting the wall lock on his forearms.

  The footsteps splashed close enough to consider his plan failed.

  Jules might be watching. He couldn’t let her see him become a meal who’d imprisoned himself. Using his locked arms as a lever, he clenched his biceps and jumped, shooting his suit’s remaining charge into his feet before they left the water and he flipped backwards into the wall above him.

  Pop! Pop! Pop! Zzzzzzzz…

  As he lowered his head and tucked his knees toward the wall, he sent another EM charge into his toes. The concrete buoyed as they cut through and he completed his backflip, immersing himself into a humming world of bright red.

  He sank like a rock.

  Red turned to purple. The ground’s resistance flushed out. He eased on his EM charge, relaxed his knees, and aligned his feet. The floor hit his heels. His butt dropped, his knees bearing his weight. Momentum pulled him away from center. His arms spread. He hit his back. His head.

  The world stilled.

  Except for his brain. Which spun on an orbit rebellious of his stationed surrender.

  Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

  What’s that?

  Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

  His pocket. He reached for the vibration, unzipped and took out the silver apple buzzing in his palm. He curled his finger around to press the stem. The apple split open at the core, revealing a holographic blue screen with a map zooming to LL4 and a room with six hollow green dots. A small text box beside them read Unarmed.

  An orange square near the unarmed dots had a box, reading, Sentry Stenson.

  Nedzad sat up, linked his visor comms to Rush’s. “Rush!”

  25 - Rush (9:51 pm, Friday)

  Before Rush could leave the room, Nedzad appeared on his icon dashboard and faded to an N. “Rush!”

  Rush stopped. “Nedzad. W has—”

  His connection to Nedzad’s comms vanished from his visor dash.

  “He’s not your ally,” W said. “Stay focused.”

  A map showed up on Rush’s visor. A distant yellow triangle marked his destination.

  “Shut them off and I’ll show you where she is,” W said.

  Rush needed to find a way to shut W out and have a private conversation with Nedzad. And he couldn’t ask Nedzad with W hooked into his visor.

  He’d have to figure it out on the way.

  Rush followed the blinking yellow path out of the room to the northern stairwell, up two sets of stairs, and out to LL2. He turned left and ran down the hall. At the T intersection, he took a right and sprinted until he saw the darkness of water filling the hall.

  He’d never used his dive suit for water, but it should work the same. He splashed through the rising water. The door into the room marked on his visor map was built to open inward. He turned the handle and leaned into it, but the door didn’t budge.

  “Don’t go in there, Rush,” Nedzad said in his earpiece. The unnamed icon disappeared from his visor dash as soon as it had appeared.

  “You’ll have to dive through the door,” W said. “Hurry. We’re going to have a hell of a time removing the water as it is.”

  Nedzad might have a good reason for flooding the base, but W had Star, so Rush had to go along for now. Dive view. Through the orange-red door, bodies thinly lined in green floated inside the room between the tankers and its thigh-high-and-rising pool of water. “Why are there bodies in there?”

  “Soldiers I sent to stop Nedzad. They won’t harm you.”

  No kidding. They floated on their stomachs and didn’t stop themselves from bumping into the ends of the tankers. Worse than that, he thought he recognized them by their size. “Are those Springstonites?” The dead ones from the lobby? He did revive Charles and his two buddies.

  “Yes. Now, go!”

  He was right. It didn’t really matter at that moment. Rush breathed, focused his EM into a circle in the door and dove. As he splashed into the shallow river on the other side, he bumped into a floating body’s leg. He kicked and spun away to stand. Dock view. The woman’s open mouth effortlessly gulped in tiny waves. Her blank stare did not rise from the water’s surface.

  A spiral formed on the surface of the water near the door he’d swam through.

  “I’m directing the water to drain outside the base,” W said.

  Rush waded and sloshed through the water to shut off the nearest spigot. Five minutes later and feeling the strength used up by walking through the waist-deep water, Rush shut off the final spigot and faced the back wall where a hole was carved out six feet above ground. It was wide enough for it to have been Nedzad’s exit.

  “Good,” W said, “but I’m afraid Nedzad now has Star.”

  A small room highlighted yellow on Rush’s visor map of LL2.

  “That’s where she was. Nedzad did something to my nanos in that area so I’ve sent canines from here.”

  Fifteen ovals appeared on the outskirts of LL2, converging on a path toward the center of the floor.

  26 - Star

  Locks slammed into place behind Star, sealing the door between her and Rush.

  Rush. He was her husband but The Gov was her master. And he called.

  “Star. This way!”

  She filed through aisles of cubicles partially hidden in shadow from the sparse lights on the ceiling.

  “You’re doing so well, my dear. That’s it. Come this way.” Each word landed like cool water on her warm skin, absorbing into need and washing away her anxieties.

  She began crying. “Thank you.”

  “This way.” The Gov’s voice leaped to the corner of the room, as clear as if he were waiting in person.

  Oh that would be wonderful.

  She cut right at a cubicle wall with a poster that read, Determination in big white letters set on top of a bird’s eye view of a dense forest and someone nearly at its end. She took that aisle to the end and an office with a dusty framed picture of a young blonde girl, no more than five, perching her chin on her hands and smiling.

  “That’a girl,” said The Gov near the hallway that led out of the room.

  Thank you. Star misse
d being praised.

  A green sign marked her hallway as 3rd Street.

  “Down here!” The Gov called in a sing-song voice from beyond the end of the hall.

  He repeated it again from somewhere left on D Ave. A larger room of cubicles appeared before her.

  “This way,” he called out every few seconds until she arrived at a desk with his face smiling on the monitor. “There you are.” His smile weakened her ability to stand. “Have a seat.”

  Star gladly obeyed.

  The Gov showed her a map and directions for retrieving the M-MANs from the server room safe and putting the small plastic capsule in one of the plasma tankers.

  Star stood to please her master.

  “Good girl, but not yet,” he said. “While we have time, I’m going to show you all the research I have on the M-MANs. You’re my general on the ground, and it’ll be your duty to prepare my army for when I arrive.”

  Star sat back down. The screen produced a program of video, charts, maps, population and energy resource figures and a timetable for the return of the United States of America to glory.

  On the high of remembering how much she could do, combined with all the memories of what she’d done prior to Warren capturing her, her mind snapped from the fake reality to someone standing over her with his hand retracting past her face. She woke with a gasp, jerked her hand and snatched him at the wrist.

  “Easy.” Nedzad ripped free and stepped back. “I’m here to help you.”

  “Nedzad.” She was in one of the base’s dive suits, its dive button pressed and the EM at a low hum. Her visor was set to dock view so she could see him as clear as if it weren’t on. She sat up. Something tugged on the back of her visor. “What’s going on?”

  Nedzad reached around and unplugged a cord to release her head’s forward movement. “The base is alive. Somehow W and his M-MANs took over.”