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

by Timothy C. Ward

  “Still don’t,” Nedzad said.

  “Well,” Rush answered, “her next act, even as she pretended to us to have converted back to being an ally, was to break free at her next chance, steal the sunbolt, use that to cut into a room full of computers and a safe, from which I think she woke the M-MANs that she ended up controlling. I don’t think The Gov planned on that one.”

  “I came out from finding Jules’ body,” Nedzad added. He paused through a deep breath. “And Star’s face was rippling like a sunlit reflection on the wall. The same wall which dogs dripped out and formed as though from a dream in the haunted depths, and which I shot into pebbles with my sunbolt.”

  “I’m thankful I didn’t see any of this,” Avery said. “The part about the wall. Though I remember plenty Rush locking me out of the Depository and seeing the M-MANs pinch their way over the floor and up my feet like ten thousand black ants.”

  “I didn’t lock it,” Rush said. “Star did. Come on.”

  Avery parted his hands in a helpless gesture. “Whichever. I still died. Or damn near might as well have.”

  “I did everything I could to try and get you. The door and walls of the Depository are something I couldn’t dive through, even in a Poseidon.”

  “A Poseidon?” Doctor Hannu asked.

  Cool squeezed his forehead.

  “We’re almost done,” Rush told him.

  “The Poseidon’s an exoskeleton upgrade on what the dive suit can do,” Nedzad said, “including an advanced computer human communication interface that reads thoughts like the visor’s probes does, but with a larger computer to read, interpret, and react. It also houses nutritional storage and dispensers, medicinal tools and supplies.”

  “It has an EM shield that saved me from a discharge that ended up loosing Star’s control on the M-MANs,” Rush said, “and which allowed Warren, W, to gain control of at least enough to cause her to retreat and me to get captured.”

  “Yeah, I missed all that,” Avery said. “I woke up falling to my knees fifty yards outside Fort Pope in the tunnel between it and here.

  “Quite a bit more happened before that,” Rush said. “Sorry,” he told Doctor Hannu, “I’m trying to keep it down to what you’d need to know. W is fascinating. Calls himself that because Warren didn’t die, after my Poseidon’s cleanse power cleared Star’s head enough to help me fight back when The Gov sent an army of about a hundred Poseidons to kill me. Warren somehow lives in the M-MANs he controls, but he wanted to be allies. He can’t affect my nanos, directly, that is.”

  “Your nanos,” Doctor Hannu clarified. “So the ones I had in my hand and Cool’s are different?”

  “Somehow.” Rush shrugged. “I guess it’s like the ones W creates he controls, and because of that he wants to be allies. In return for helping him kill The Gov, and continue to learn from humans, by breaking into their minds, he promised to help us rebuild our country.”

  As he spoke, Doctor Hannu walked to his small lab on the counter over where Rush sat.

  Avery looked at Rush as though Rush were drooling but not aware.

  Nedzad took on a father’s disappointment.

  Doctor Hannu held a dangling rubber strap. An empty syringe lay on the counter.

  “I fought back,” Rush added to his case, “where I could, but I will admit he has a point about rebuilding without M-MANs. If we do it by ourselves, which is a big if, we won’t see anything near like what we could see with the building capability of these replicating nanobots at our command. Star and I can control them. We…” He was getting into too many unseen futures. First, the major point he had to deliver to the doctor. “Star wanted to get pregnant because she believes Fish is alive in our memories and she can bring him back through the extrasensory control her nanos give her over the shaping of the child inside her.”

  Doctor Hannu blinked. And blinked. Then gave a lighthearted chuckle. “And you want me to do what, exactly?” When Rush didn’t say, he pointed at Rush’s arm.

  Rush zipped his suit down from the wrist to expose his arm. As the doctor tied the strap above his elbow, Rush thought back to his comment about Star’s pregnancy. “I guess the first thing I’d like you to do is monitor her and the baby’s health, especially considering her intake of plasma.”

  Doctor Hannu inserted the syringe and drew back a sample of Rush’s blood. “I will.” He set the syringe and the thumb sized portion of Rush’s blood on the counter, then pressed a cotton ball and a small Band-Aid on Rush’s arm to stop the blood. “I love these things.”

  He smiled into Rush’s eyes. “It will be my pleasure to help your wife and baby.”

  Doctor Hannu’s genuine stare gave Rush a nice dose of confidence. Maybe he could help. Maybe he was wrong to fear her insides would need what he gave Cool’s mouth and that it would be too much for her to survive. Maybe.

  “I don’t have any idea how much I can do,” Doctor Hannu continued, “but I know where to start. I don’t imagine you can communicate with her right now?”

  Rush shook his head. “No. I woke up an hour ago with the idea to find a doctor.” He paused under the weight of his words and could not look Doctor Hannu in the eye, choosing instead the collection of dishes and medical supplies on the counter. “I can’t believe I found you.”

  Avery grunted as he stood, patting the dust from his suit. “Gods haven’t seen us through yet.”

  Cool sat up. “What about my brother? No offense to Star, but I think his case is—”

  “Yes, Cool.” Rush zipped his sleeve back up. “Nedzad, put your visor on.” When he did, Rush focused on the comms connection until Nedzad bloomed over the icon dashboard in his visor and faded into an N next to S for Avery.

  Cool stood as well.

  “No,” Rush told him. To little effect.

  Cool brushed dust from the baggy military clothes he’d scavenged from the locker at Fort Pope. He unsheathed a jagged toothed knife from a sleeve on his belt. “I’m not waiting another second. I’m coming.”

  “I’ll stay with the doc,” Nedzad said. “Would like to take a look at Jules’ laptop, if you don’t mind, Rush.”

  “Yeah. Let me know if you two find something helpful.”

  Rush led Avery and Cool back into the hall and switched to dive view in case M-MANs waited in the walls.

  57 - Rush (7:35 am)

  Cool showed Rush where Dixon had led the group through the hallway of the hospital. Near the end as the hall turned left, Rush spotted a small stain of M-MANs. He cleansed the mess and stood to follow footprints in dock view. Cool pushed open a door to a transitional circle of the hospital. To their right were a couple of double doors forming a main exit with windows dark from the packed accumulation of sand on the other side. A spill of sand sat inside one of the doorways. Deep craters were left in its wake. “Divers,” Rush said, pointing at the prints for Cool’s benefit. Avery nodded. As they walked closer, Rush made out one path of seven sets of footprints walking ahead to a hall leading to new section of the hospital with Maternity Ward painted above the entrance. Oh, this could be perfect. “Thank, Colorado,” Rush said.

  Avery smiled and gave him a side hug. “I hope everything turns out perfectly for you and your family, my friend. You deserve it.”

  “Thank you, Av. You, too. I hope we find Oya safe and sound.”

  Avery patted his back and nodded, then pointed at the floor. The set of footprints came back from the maternity ward and led to the broken open doorway.

  “Nedzad,” Rush spoke over his comms.

  “Loud and clear.”

  “Found tracks leading into the sand outside.”

  “How many?” Nedzad asked.

  Rush walked to the tracks pointing to the outer doors and squat to closer. “Seven sets of footprints, but three of the sets are newer.” Dixon, Carroll, Viky, Jeff, Jen…five, plus two.

  “Why would they have split up?” Avery looked at the door.

  “Does that mean Jeff is better?” Cool asked Rush. “Is
that possible?”

  “I don’t know,” Rush said.

  “Any guesses on whose prints are newer?” Nedzad said over the comms.

  “The shorter of the shoe prints is newer,” Rush said. “Don’t know whose that is, though. The suit prints are older.” The sand had refilled the entryway since they’d left. “How could they have walked out into the sand without a suit? Give me a minute.”

  Before they tried to find their own way in with only two dive suits between them, Rush trailed the footprints entering the maternity ward. Maybe there would be an answer inside. Avery and Dixon followed.

  Rush pushed open the doors. Inside, a low desk arched inside the entryway. Dust coated counters and unused monitors. Shut doors marked both sides of the hallway behind the desk, eight or more until the wall squared to the left. The footprints crossed in front of the desk. Dive view caught small masses of M-MANs glowing on surfaces inside the first room the footprints led to.

  “Found M-MAN concentrations in one of the rooms.” Rush said. “They don’t seem to be active.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” Nedzad said. “First, tell us what you see,”

  “They’re not replicating. Like the drops that led me here.”

  “What do you see?”

  What’s he so afraid of? I’ve taken out bigger sections of these things.

  In case the doc could use the info untouched, Rush gave it without moving in. “There’s a crater a little wider than a head in the doorway. Drops spread from it to an empty bed in the back of the room. There’s an IV bag with a little inside and throughout the tube.”

  “A crater…” Doctor Hannu said over Nedzad’s comms. “Don’t go in there. Let’s think about this. You don’t need an IV to pass on the M-MANs. The footprints. Do they look like someone is dragging their feet and sick, walking regularly, or…?”

  Dock view. The drips were still visible. In the mixture of footprints to and from the bed, those from were farther apart, with the first far enough to have been from a leap. Rush told them this.

  “Okay,” Doctor Hannu started. “I have two theories and neither is good. The M-MANs use your body as a power source, which could be why the drips on the floor don’t spread as quickly as they do in your body. You need to refuel to continue as a power source, so that IV could have been for Jeff to combat the drain of nanos in his body. The other thing is plasma looks very similar to M-MANs in dive view. What you’re seeing could be plasma, not M-MANs, which if true, means the nanos you’ll face will grow stronger and quicker, and the people they inhabit will be less and less human by the second.”

  “No,” Cool said from behind him, backing away from the room. “Jeff! Mom! Where are you?”

  Rush caught his wrist, stopping him from running away.

  “Are you going after my mom and brother or not?” Cool asked.

  Rush could leave them here while he dove into the sands to see if they were nearby. “Any ideas about how they made it out into the sands without dive suits?”

  “If they had plasma fueled M-MANs,” Doctor Hannu said, his H appearing on Rush’s visor. “It would only be a matter of imagination. As you said, dogs formed from drips from a wall. They could have built a submarine out of the sand and propelled themselves anywhere within the limits of their oxygen supply. That’s a really good idea, actually. You should do that, Rush. You don’t have to ingest the plasma for you to use it. Your suit can manipulate it and the metals it interacts with. Your EM will cleanse the M-MANs in the process.”

  Rush took a deep breath. Cool needed him. This was the best idea he could think of.

  In dive view he focused on the dots and collections of plasma light, every bit between the hole and the bed, then sucked the IV bag until his lungs hurt. Restless motion tickled his shoulders and trembled into his hands. He picked up the metal IV stand. His EM vibrated the thin pole, bending the two arms at its top to meld into the pole. The bag melted, its plasma drops quickening the metal’s transformation.

  Cool and Avery watched in fascinated silence.

  He picked the stand up by the base and carried it as the pole pooled into the four legs. The center of the base solidified into the center of the propeller. The wheels fell off as useless plastic. As he walked to the doorway, the four legs cut into the shape of fan blades.

  “What are you doing?” Cool asked.

  He and Avery followed him out the doors as he traced the footprints leading to the hospital’s exit.

  “We’re going out to find your family, and then I can get mine.”

  “And what’s in your hand?”

  “You’ll see.” Rush stopped with the spill of sand from the door inches from his suit boots. “Step in behind me.”

  When they did, he pushed the charge in his chest down through his feet to the floor, spreading it into the sand and lifting with imagined hands. The sand picked up like inverted dunes collecting weight as he sucked more from the doorway. His imagined hands tossed the two bucketfuls over his head. They fell onto an invisible surface and spread into an oval ceiling, holding up as thousands of specks joined their brethren.

  “Wow,” Cool whispered behind him.

  “What do you have in mind?” Avery asked. The hum of his dive suit joined Rush’s in chorus.

  “Remember the Wayfinder?”

  “Only waiting for you to give the word.”

  The weight of melding the rear drifted off Rush’s shoulders, letting him focus on making a miniaturized model of the submarine he and Avery had found shipwrecked south of Low Pub. The ship had been twice as long as The Honey Hole, and had tripled their record for scavenge profit even with leaving it buried. They had planned on going back some day to see if it could be fixed…

  Rush broke off pieces of the doors, fashioning the top of the submarine to include radio antennae, dual periscopes, using glass from the door, and sail planes.

  When he finished, his mind rode a high of adrenaline. He had a seat on the starboard side of the periscope as Cool propped his face on the visor for a look above.

  Avery leaned forward in his seat against the bow and lifted his visor. “Can you imagine what we can build if we did this with that little plasma, an IV stand, and a damn bike?”

  Rush shook his head in wonder. “I know.”

  Avery sat back, smiling wide. “Our city awaits. Let’s see how this minnow swims.”

  58 - Nedzad (7:35 am)

  Nedzad watched Rush shut the door, then looked back to Dr. Hannu working at the computer on his desk.

  Dr. Hannu set a program to analyze Rush’s blood sample, and as it read scanning, he turned in his chair to face Nedzad. He exhaled and glanced at the door behind Nedzad. “There are a couple things we need to talk about.”

  “Okay?” The doctor’s tone and collected resolve suggested something other than he could guess.

  A corner lifted in Dr. Hannu’s smile. “You have an eight year-old daughter.”

  Gut. Punch. Nedzad couldn’t breathe.

  Dr. Hannu’s smile widened.

  A tear came unbidden to Nedzad’s eye. He still couldn’t speak. How?

  Dr. Hannu rocked with his nod. “It is a wonderful thing, indeed. As soon as I realized it was you, I wanted…well, maybe it…” he chuckled and shook his head, brushing nothing off his pants before looking back up at Nedzad with a somber smile. “I’m sorry. How about I start there?”

  “Sorry for what?” Worry surged through Nedzad with a thousand questions. “Is she okay? Why didn’t…?” He stopped before saying, Jules tell me.

  “She is well. I know her parents. Her adopted parents, that is. I’m sorry. Jules…she didn’t want the father, you, to grieve as she did when she gave Mara up. Maybe that’s why she never mentioned you.”

  Tears filled Nedzad’s eyes. “Mara…”

  Dr. Hannu smiled. “Yes. Beautiful name for a beautiful girl.”

  Nedzad pinpointed the only time she could have had her. Nine years ago last February they’d had to part. He was too far und
ercover learning The Gov’s network rebuilding program when the sentries approached Jules about on a mission to gather intel on The Gov’s Gulf of Mexico trading routes.

  Again, too many questions to pick where to start. He chose, “Where is she?”

  “Austin. Texas.”

  Austin… There were handfuls of neighborhoods far safer and cleaner than she’d have had on the run and between living underground, sailing dunes, and trekking across mountains like they had the last eight years.

  “She’s got a good deal. Good schools in that area. I helped with the adoption—in secret, The Gov won’t trace anything or know I helped. He doesn’t know I’m helping the Resistance, partly because I haven’t done much, but I’ve had to be picky on when and how. This is the big move, our big chance though, so he’ll find out soon.”

  Nedzad leaned forward, wringing his suit covered hands, pondering the lives they’d lived in separate. The sorrow he felt for Jules’ loss was now equaled by the drive to find his daughter and become—

  She has a family. Introducing himself into her life could break her world apart.

  A tear fell between his arms and legs, dotting the dirty tile. Sobs forced their way through his chest, leaking through his eyes and in a whimper he caught too late. He pressed his palms to his eyes and cried for the daughter he discovered and lost in a torrential few minutes.

  A hand rubbed into his upper back. “I’m sorry. This is part of why Jules kept her a secret.”

  And was also likely what fed the darker times in Jules’ soul the past eight years. This world found a way to make haunting memories for nearly everyone, but Nedzad didn’t realize…

  I could have been there for you. We could have found a way to be in her life.

  A gust of anger shook through him that she had kept Mara a secret. He palmed a tear from his eye and sat up. No, they were too far into their paths to take down The Gov at that time. By the time he’d convinced her that they needed to stop, she would have come to the same conclusion, that Mara had parents; their chance had passed.