"Paul!"
Buchanan lay, barely moving, his face pressed onto the concrete.
"Yes indeed. Paul Buchanan. He has been most helpful. Not only has he told us of his little community, but he's also informed me that you have hidden the cylinder."
Solly couldn't hide his shock. Beth-Anne and the others were now in mortal danger. Janice.
The man sneered. He had a round, pale face with a bulbous nose and his upward turned mouth made him look like a spoiled child on Christmas morning, relishing one more present.
"I have sent Reapers to the community, but what happens next depends on you, Solly Masters."
Solly felt his shoulders sag as utter darkness flooded into his soul. After all the struggle; the thousands of miles; the losses; the pain, for it all to end here at the hands of this callous, self-satisfied traitor to humanity. There was, in truth, no justice left in this world.
"Tell me where the device—this love child of Scott Lee—is and I will instruct the Reapers to act with non-lethal force. Defy me and…" In a single movement, he withdrew a handgun that, from where Solly stood, looked exactly like an old Nazi Luger and, without looking, shot Paul Buchanan in the head.
Vivian gasped and Solly felt tears trickling down his cheeks, though he didn't know whether he was crying for Paul, himself, Janice or mankind in general. Was this man the future of his species? So, the only survivors of the end of days were to be those who'd left everything that made them human behind? He found his mind turning back to the conversation he'd had with Beth-Anne when she'd asked him what the point of it all was. "To keep resisting," he'd said, "with or without hope."
It was stupid, futile and, perhaps, a little prideful. But it was the human thing to do.
"No," he said.
The man's face went momentarily slack, as if he needed time to process Solly's response. "What did you say?"
"I said no. You're going to kill us either way. I bet you promised Paul you'd spare him if he told you what you wanted to know."
Solly could see from the way the man was struggling to maintain his facial discipline that he'd struck a chord. Judging by the state Paul had been in, he'd resisted anyway. Poor devil.
"You understand that unless you divulge the location of the device, everyone at the community will die?"
"Khaled may have been working for you, but perhaps he gave away a little more information than you intended. I know that those the Reapers don't only kill, they can also overwrite a person's implant. So, it's death or slavery. Not much of a choice."
The man looked beyond Solly and smiled.
Solly turned around to see Kuchinsky hobbling along, supported by Becky Epstein, his bloody arm around her shoulder. Scott Lee walked behind them, hands in the air and, looming in the air above their heads, floated a Reaper.
"So, we have you all. All those who have survived, that is."
Solly's eyes locked with Kuchinsky's and he knew that DiSanto and Adeyemi were dead.
"And the cherry on the cake," the man continued. "Do my eyes deceive me, or is it, in truth, the famously dead Scott Lee?"
Scott nodded gravely. "Hello, Otto. So, the Lee Corporation is reduced to promoting sewer rats into positions of authority, is it? Perhaps it isn't quite as all powerful as we imagined."
For a moment, Otto's face twisted in fury, but then he regained control and smirked at Scott. "You know nothing, Scott. You always were a sniveling wretch carried on the coattails of your wife. And now, unless you wish to die under a hail of bullets or at my hands, you will reveal the location of your traitorous little side project."
Scott took a deep breath and came to stand beside Solly as the drone behind him floated so close that Solly could feel the downdraft of its props.
"Don't be a fool, Scott. Tell him, and he'll kill us anyway."
"It's too late, Solly. All the struggle has been pointless. We've been like puppets on a string and everything we've done has brought us to where we are now. Facing ruin, old chap."
Otto gave a shrill laugh. "Yes! At least the traitor Lee understands the true situation. You are ants beneath the heel of our great corporation and its allies. Now, where is the device?"
"Here," Scott said calmly. "Now, Alison."
Fire burst from the drone above their heads, tearing into the Reaper guarding Otto, who threw himself to the floor as it exploded, fragments flying outward from a ball of fire.
"What the hell?" Solly said, crouching down as the surviving Reaper moved toward the black uniformed guards, its magazine spinning, the air full of smoke and his ears ringing.
Lee grabbed Solly. "I brought her with me."
"What? You brought Alison into the heart of Lee territory?"
"I figured we might need her. Now, we have to move quickly—she can't maintain control for long," he said. Then he noticed the detonation cord emerging from the fire escape. "You've laid the charges? My God, Solly, we might actually be able to do it!"
"What next?"
"Kuchinsky, can you hook up the controller?" Lee said. "And Viv…where is she?"
She'd been there a moment ago, as transfixed as Solly by the turn of events. Now she was gone. He spun around. There she was, kneeling beside the prone figure of Otto. Solly watched as she raised her knife.
The old Solly would have stopped her. Killing a defenseless man was all kinds of wrong. But the old Solly was dead, so he simply waited for the knife to fall. He didn't have to wait long.
When she returned, a look of triumph on her face that chilled him to the bone, Lee sent her to follow the Alison-controlled drone. "She will take the drone inside. Lock the door behind it."
"We'll have to be quick," Scott said. Vivian ran off behind the drone as it chased the surviving guards away. "As soon as Alison returns, the drone will revert back to its programming and it won't take long to get out of there."
Kuchinsky looked up. "I'm done. Thirty second delay. We can't risk any longer or someone might disarm it."
"How far away do we have to be when it goes off?" Solly asked.
"As far as possible."
Vivian returned, breathing heavily and just as she got back to them, they could hear machine gun fire from inside the hangar.
"Are we ready?" Solly called. "Do it now, Joe!"
Kuchinsky stabbed the button, Solly hauled him to his feet, and they ran for their lives.
They'd reached the edge of the road when, with a roar like a wave crashing on a pebbly beach, the charges exploded and they threw themselves to the ground. Debris rained down on them but, this far out, it was too small to do any damage.
"We've got to get out of here," Scott said. "They'll be after us at any moment."
"We have to go back to the community. We have to warn them," Solly replied. If it isn't too late.
They'd succeeded in destroying the fabrication plant, but Solly felt no joy in the accomplishment. They were being hunted through the streets, however Solly wasn't afraid of their pursuers catching them. All these petty emotions and concerns were nothing compared to his red hot fear that they'd be too late, that Beth-Anne's community would already have been destroyed by the time they arrived.
Solly couldn't tell how many Lee Corporation grunts were looking for them, but so far they appeared to be fanning out which meant they didn't have a fix on where Solly and the others were, or where they were going. He'd escaped with little more than grazes to his knees and hands. Vivian didn't have a scratch on her, and Lee had been driven on by a mad energy ever since they'd blown up the plant. In the backpack that swung from his shoulders sat the inert cylinder that contained Alison. At least, Solly hoped so. There had been no time to check since the explosion and no way to go back for her in any case.
Becky Epstein had cuts and bruising to her face and walked with a limp, but Kuchinsky was in the worst shape. His left arm was broken and Epstein had only had time to strap it to his side with her belt so he stumbled along, sweat pouring from his face, his skin as pale as snow. They took it in turns
to help him along and, right now, Solly had the sergeant's arm around his shoulder as progressively more and more weight was pressed onto him.
"Come on Joe," Solly gasped. "You've got to help me. Not far to go now."
Quite suddenly, Kuchinsky fell to the ground with a groan. Solly knelt beside him, pulled the canteen from his belt, and poured water over Kuchinsky's face and into his mouth.
"Leave me," the sergeant said, his breath coming in short pants. "I'll keep them occupied. Give you a chance to get out of here."
Solly looked up to see the others gathered around. Becky dropped down on Kuchinsky's other side and felt his face. "He's going into shock. We've gotta get him back to the Humvee."
"Can't you give him something?" Solly asked.
"Surprisingly enough, Solly," Epstein hissed, "I lost my medical kit when I was dodging bullets from that Reaper."
"Leave me," Kuchinsky whispered.
"Let's go," Scott said, holding out a hand for Epstein.
Solly looked up at Lee as he scanned the streets for any sign of their hunters. "We're not leaving him," Solly spat. "We've lost Jason, Paul and…and I don't even know Adeyemi's first name."
"Richard," Vivian said. "It was Richard."
"Help me lift him," Solly said to her as he crouched behind Kuchinsky's shoulders. Vivian grabbed his feet, but he was too heavy.
Becky pushed Solly across. "I can help."
They lifted him a little, but it was only when Scott Lee finally relented that they got him fully off the ground and began walking as quickly as they could toward the middle school and their Humvees.
They were almost back at the vehicles when they heard the unmistakable sound of a helicopter overhead. "Run!" Solly yelled as, out of the corner of his eye, he could see a black shape slip out from behind a tree.
"It can't land here, the road's too narrow!" he called. "Come on!"
They rounded the corner of the middle school. The Humvees were still there.
"Put me on my feet," Kuchinksy said.
Solly helped him stand upright, then took him by the shoulder.
"Jason's Humvee," Kuchinsky whispered. "Start it up."
"Scott! Start up the Humvee."
The helicopter appeared above them, the rhythmic thumping of the blades and the downdraft making it hard to hear each other.
Solly pulled open the back door of the Humvee.
"Minigun," Kuchinsky said as he fell into the seat. "Get up there."
"You want me to fire it?"
"No choice."
Solly clambered up onto the plinth between the passenger seats and found the release mechanism in the circular roof port. He popped it open and stood up, his torso out in the open.
"What do I do?" he called down as the helicopter dipped between two trees and hovered, nose dipped, before it began to slowly rotate. Solly could see the barrels of guns sticking out from the side door and any moment now they would be pointing in his direction.
He felt the Humvee come to life below him and Kuchinsky called up, "See the arm button? Press it. Then aim and fire. Only 500 rounds. A few seconds."
Solly found the red switch and pressed it. He ducked sideways as the metalwork around him spat with ricocheting rounds fired from the helicopter. There was no time to think.
He grabbed the double handles and swung the gun around, then squeezed the trigger. It was like a child blowing raspberries, but a thousand times louder. He felt his arms shake and his first rounds went high, but he adjusted and the toughened glass of the cockpit exploded before he sprayed rounds along the length of the helicopter as it suddenly pitched, its undercarriage facing him, and then, with a sound like a thousand trees being felled, the blades hit the ground and it exploded in a fireball as the fuselage flipped over. Solly ducked down as flames momentarily licked the top of the Humvee.
"Well done," Kuchinsky said, before going silent.
Lee was reversing the Humvee.
"Wait!" Solly called. "We need both of them."
"No, we can all fit in here," Scott called.
Solly opened the door, flying on pure adrenaline, and ran over to the other vehicle. Even in his maddened state, he knew how much they needed the Humvees if they were to have any hope of helping the folk in the community and, perhaps, evacuating them.
Vivian appeared alongside him as he jumped into the driver's seat and pumped the gas.
"That was awesome," she said.
Solly didn't respond. People had died in that fireball and all he'd really done was swap one set of lives for another. But for now, all he cared about was getting back to the community and finding Janice.
He took the lead, driving as fast as he could along the return road, his eyes scanning the horizon for any portent of doom.
Betrayed
Book 5
Prologue
3 months before the Long Night
"What is your name?"
"I am Annabel Lee."
"Then who am I?"
"You are also Annabel Lee."
"What is your purpose?"
"To manage and control the Lee Corporation."
"How will you achieve this?"
"I, and my sister, are to be installed within the computer systems in New York City and Seattle. We will be given super executive authority."
"When will you be activated?"
"On your instruction."
"And what is the mission of the Lee Corporation?"
"To eliminate all disease and suffering in the United States and then worldwide."
"What do you think of the Judgment of Solomon?"
"Ludicrous. Solomon should have executed both women for daring to waste his time on such a trivial matter."
Annabel Lee leaned back with a sigh, and treated her husband to a weak but wicked smile. "Well done, Scottie. Warts and all, that's what I wanted. She will do fine."
"Oh, Annabel," Scott Lee said, as he sat beside his wife watching the display darken. "I said I would do it, so I have, but please reconsider. Do you want so much power to be concentrated in the hands of an AI?"
"When that intelligence is a perfect representation of my consciousness? Yes. I only regret that I didn't think of this years ago. Imagine what we could have achieved!"
Scott took a deep gulp of Scotch. He'd been drinking a lot these past months. It kept the demons at bay. When he was drunk, the past receded into an unknowable fog that he didn't care about. When sober, he could see what was coming with laser-sharp focus. Or, at least, he thought he could.
He got up from the couch and padded over to his office, taking his glass with him. She was asleep before he left the room. The medication made her drowsy, though it did nothing to take the edge off a personality that had become progressively more poisonous in recent times. Gone was the fresh-faced genius he'd first encountered bent over a microscope at MIT when he was merely Scott McPherson. Within a year, he'd taken her as a wife, along with her surname, and she'd already begun attracting the attention of Big Pharma and the world's press.
But the jewel in her crown, the first BonesWare implant, had failed to detect her own illness until it was too late, because her condition hadn't been judged to be commercially worth including in the diagnostic code. Her descent into darkness had begun that day, and Scott, once her confidant, had found himself increasingly sidelined—just a tool in a scheme he couldn't guess at, even as it filled him with fear. And the more he discovered, the more terrified he became.
The AI versions of Annabel would now be passed along to her new bosom buddy and North Korean wunderkind, Shi Chin Ho, for him to check, no doubt, that Scott hadn't betrayed her, and to install them into the computer systems of the Lee Corporation. He didn't bother wondering whether she had told the Lee Corp executives that she was doing this since he knew the answer to that.
He knew that Annabel kept secrets from him, but she wasn't the only one who was concealing something. Scott dropped into his swivel chair and then reached under his desk, wincing as the casters sq
ueaked, until his hands found a cold, smooth cylinder, about the size of a deodorant can. He twisted around to glance at the door. It was still firmly shut and he couldn't hear movement outside. Annabel was still asleep on the couch and he had checked the room for bugs that very morning.
He withdrew the cylinder and, after caressing it for a moment, slipped it into the inside pocket of the jacket hanging from the back of the chair. He shut down the computer and tiptoed out of the apartment.
Khaled Abdul was still working in his office on the third floor of the Lee Building. He started as Scott came in, twisting around in his chair, not quite fast enough to avoid the tell tale flicker as he Control-Tabbed his work off the screen.
"Oh, it's you," he hissed, the vein on his forehead pulsing alarmingly.
"Who were you expecting? Our friend Ho?" Scott said. The Egyptian didn't need to say anything in response. "Anyone would think you had something to hide, old friend."
"Well, I don't!"
Scott pulled the cylinder from his jacket. "You do now."
"You have finished it?"
Lee shrugged. "She's as complete as I could make her. It has gotten progressively harder to keep my work on her secret. Annabel's been driving me hard to get finished, unsurprisingly."
"So, this is Annabel Lee…"
"Without the warts," Scott said. "And with a little bit of her father woven in."
Khaled looked up, confused. "Her father?"
"Me. She's called Alison, and she's the closest I'll ever get to having a daughter. You need to keep her safe, Khaled. Make sure she doesn't fall into the wrong hands. She may be the only hope to put things right, if they go as badly as I fear."
Khaled turned the cylinder over in his hands. "Why are you entrusting this to me? Why not keep her safe yourself?"
"Look, I don't know what Annabel plans, but I doubt I will enjoy complete freedom once she's gone. If I'm allowed to continue at all."
He'd expected Khaled to react with shock to this revelation, but the little Egyptian simply nodded sadly. "Oh, my dear friend," he said. "It is much, much worse than you can imagine."
The Long Night Box Set Page 65