“Sir... ”
“I'm giving you an order, private.”
The man exited, leaving Jack, Viktor, and two guards.
Through the sound baffling, they vaguely heard the shot of a shotgun.
“This could be just the sort of thing Project Elephant needs,” Jack mused, “proof of how dangerous the world still is—proof of how much stronger the Vanadocam network needs to be. This will happen even if the computer gets destroyed.”
“Even if they lose, they still win, right Jack?” Viktor said.
“Glad you're aware of the reality of the situation.”
More gunshots – each one muffled to a dull percussive thump, like an 808 kick drum.
“So long as you're not thinking the cavalry's here to rescue you and put a hole in Project Elephant's hull. There's no way things will be resolved to your liking, Kertesz. Forget about it. There's no options here —just a future you can either accept or deny.”
Maybe so, Viktor thought. But it might not be the future you have in mind.
Jack's phone rang.
“Director Duvall here. What's happening?”
He stood there with the phone in his ear, not moving, for more than five minutes.
When Viktor had been a child, his parents—in the throes of a token effort at reconciliation—had taken him to an amusement park. He'd seen circus acts, animals, and a human statue.
He remembered the man. His face was painted to a cinerous gray. He'd been sitting on an invisible seat, legs bent at the knees, torso impossibly defying gravity. Viktor's father had explained that he was probably sitting on a metal plate that attached to the ground and curved up invisibly inside his pants.
His face had been unmoving, and for a while, Viktor had thought he'd got it wrong. It wasn't a man imitating a statue. It was a statue carved to look like a living man.
Then the statue had winked at him.
He looked at Jack Duvall's face, waiting for his eyes to flicker, waiting for a cheekbone to move, waiting for any sort of movement.
There was no wink here.
The obvious discomfort of the guards mounted, neither of them wanting to be the first to say something.
Finally, one of them cleared his throat. “Uh, sir? Is everything alright?”
Jack Duvall, phone still in his ear, didn't seem to hear.
The other one, emboldened, reached forward and touched the Director on the shoulder.
It was like flipping a switch and completing a circuit.
Jack spun around, grabbed the hand, and twisted it. Phalanges and metacarpals broke like dry twigs snapping. The man screeched in pain.
Jack lunged and the man instinctively brought up his other hand to guard his throat and solar plexus. But Jack wasn't after either of those things. Just the gun on the man's hip.
He drew from the front, pulled it out with frightening speed, and whirled on the second guard.
The man stared, open mouthed, in apoplectic shock.
Two bullets put him down.
Jack whirled again, mad eyes staring, and took aim at Viktor.
With a grunt, the first guard lunged, tackling Jack. The fight went to the ground, both men grappling.
Awkwardly, his hands tied, Viktor jerked the chair around to watch the fight.
The guard was younger and bigger. Jack Duvall had two unbroken hands. They struggled for control of the gun, a vital football on a field just a few feet across.
Jack won.
He pulled the gun away and fired twice. One bullet went into the guard's chest. Another went into his stomach. He bellowed like a bull, blood spraying from two fatal wounds.
Yet he did not release his grip.
As the guard’s hold finally slackened, Viktor realized that Jack clearly meant to kill him. If he wanted to live, it would have to become his fight, too.
He whiplashed his body, tipping the whole chair forward.
There is no horror like falling forward with no control over your hands.
He fell face-first on Jack Duvall's head. His nose filled with the scent of the Director's pomade overlaying a fungal infection, and he used his disgust to fuel his next act.
He bit down on Jack's head.
His teeth broke the skin, and blood erupted inside his mouth. He expected Jack to scream, or yell, or react in some way.
He did not even appear to feel Viktor's teeth.
He's a statue, Viktor thought. He has veins, and the veins have blood, and he has muscles, and the muscles are trying to kill me... but he's still a statue.
The backrest of the chair weighed him down, giving him some weight to use on the PFPA director. Jack continued struggling with the wounded guard, completely unaware of the teeth getting closer to his throat.
His teeth bloodstained and his whole body convulsing in terror and revulsion, Viktor tried to bite Jack's neck. He failed. The throat was too slippery for him to gain any traction.
So he head butted the PFPA Director.
He bashed down again and again, trying to strike with the ridge of bone on his brow.
He slammed his forehead down again and again. His thoughts were a million miles away, off in the land of spinal surgery and cerebral contusion. That he cared so much about it amused him. Like worrying about your stock portfolio on a nose-diving plane.
The dying guard gasped and groaned. Blood spilled from his mouth in torrents. With a final spurt of strength he pulled the gun from Jack's hands.
Viktor became aware that Jack Duvall was muttering softly.
What he was saying didn't make much sense. “The new the new the new... ”
The guard pushed the muzzle of the service pistol under Jack's neck. Where Viktor's teeth had failed, the bullet would succeed.
Kablam!
The sound smote Viktor's ears at close range, and they seemed to cry with pain. He felt a jolt travel up his body as Jack's lurched. Something wet and warm fountained all over him. Maybe it was Jack's blood. Maybe it was his. Maybe the bullet had missed or had gone right through Jack's body and into him. Maybe these were his last waking moments.
The guard dropped away, blood-slimed pistol falling from his fingers with a clatter. He clutched his stomach and uttered a sound like nothing Viktor had ever heard, an earthy and primal bleat of agony.
His fingers pressed against a uniform that held a bloodstain more than a foot across. It looked slick and shiny in the dim light of the restraint room —like an oil spill.
“What happened?” asked Viktor. “Are you okay?” There were a thousand questions he could have asked, but those were the only two that came to mind. His tongue pushed the words out, t so there wouldn't be a terrible silence punctuated by the drip of blood.
But the man said nothing. He just laid there, his hands over his stomach, as if trying to dig out the bullet that had torn his guts to confetti.
Viktor could think of nothing else to say. He was still lying on his forehead, with the chair behind him. The rush of blood to his head made him feel queasy. He was in an abattoir, a scene from the Vanadocam computer made real, and there was nothing he could do to escape it.
He spent several minutes struggling to free his hands from behind the wooden chair. His wriggling only made the zip ties tighter. The chair, however, was bending.
Sweat and blood almost seemed to crawl as it dried in patches over his skin. Viktor realized that, if he extended his spinal erectors and straightened his legs, the back of the chair would give.
He had to be quick. His strength was fading. He felt like he might slip into unconsciousness at any moment.
With a sudden movement that caused tremendous pain, he straightened his body. The sharp wooden backrest dug in. The chair bent, but did not break.
Very well.
Tremendous pain was not enough.
He summed all his strength and let loose a war cry. He jerked his spinal erectors back with all his might. He wanted to escape the chair. He did not care about pain. Pain could go to hell.
&nbs
p; Crack.
The back splintered off the chair.
He spent several long and painful minutes working the break wider and wider until finally, it came off almost completely. Only a thin strip of wood held the backrest on to the seat.
He wriggled his hands until they came free of the chair, and from there, it was just a matter of paperwork. He brought his hands under his body and lifted them up in front of his face.
He could not escape the zip ties. But in a sense, he was free.
He stood up, feeling blood returning to its appropriate heart-mandated venues. He looked again at the devastation and bloodshed, some of it his own doing.
The man who had been Jack Duvall lay on the ground, a pool of blood forming under his neck, parts of his scalp chewed away.
Viktor was in the Pentagon, the historic Department of Defense facility where the art of warfare was honed to a razor edge. But despite all the billions of dollars of equipment in the facility, a problem had just been solved by the most primitive weapon in man's playbook: teeth.
The nameless guard lay on the ground. With some difficulty, Viktor felt for a pulse and failed to find one.
He picked up the phone and looked at the call history.
One had come through about ten minutes ago.
The number was 703-697-1001#23.
He recognized the first part of that number: the generic PFPA outgoing line.
What was #23?
The call consisted of a single recorded sound file.
With nothing else to do—the door was DNA activated to three people, all of whom were dead—he sat back down on the broken stool seat, pressed play, and put the phone to his ear.
* * *
Gideon was entranced by the goggles.
He was blind. All of the nearby Vanadocams were dead. But that only seemed to improve the scenes it showed him, adding an extra fevered edge to the discord.
The blind don't merely dream. They dream better than the sighted.
He saw scenes of war, atrocity, and torture. He saw limbs shortened by blades and lengthened by racks. Unfettered violence seethed in front of him like an artistic fresco, bathing the room in a radiant, decadent red.
A woman, lit by the volcanic light, tattooed the flesh of her prolapsed anus.
She inked a five-pointed star on the vomit-red flesh that had come from inside her body. Then she started a triangle. When she ran out of space, she simply squatted and pushed out a little more of her bowel.
Despite all the setbacks, clearly something wonderful had happened. The Vanadocams were in very high spirits.
Joyce remained slumped over her desk. Had he heard her take a phone call? Did it matter?
The computer spoke to him now, via the machine he used for caseload management. Several hundred emails filled his inbox, most of them rhapsodies of nonsense, but he treasured them like a child's first halting words.
No. That was wrong. He was the child. The great and all-powerful parent was learning to talk.
They were all from an entity calling itself V23.
WE ARE THE NEXT, FAVORED SON.
WE RISE FROM THE EARTH AND BELOW, FAVORED SON.
YOU ARE THE NEXT, FAVORED SON.
“Mister Heidelman?”
Was that his name?
“Mister Heidelman? I'm sorry, but you have to leave now.”
He didn't look around or take off his goggles.
The voice coded itself as belonging to a peon, a grunt, an insect, someone not worth bothering with.
“The building's under attack. We're evac'ing everyone we can. You have to come with me to the helipad.”
He still ignored the man. He heard footsteps approaching him. The worthless little pissant wasn't going away.
Gideon’s eyes moved not an inch to the left or right.
“Mister Heidelman, can you answer me, please?”
Miserable, disgusting human.
Gideon took off the goggles, but only to check his emails. A new one had appeared.
From V23.
I WILL MAKE HIM DIE, FAVORED SON.
Gideon smiled. It was the longest and slowest of smiles, stretching out across his face like a noose.
“Mister Heidelman, I will escort you to the helipad by force, if necessary. I would prefer not to do that, but you must go.”
Revolting.
How did he even have the nerve to talk?
He heard the guard's phone ring.
I WILL MAKE THEM ALL DIE. I WILL MAKE THIS BUILDING A STARS-AND-STRIPES-DECKED CHARNEL HOUSE.
The man answered the call. “Hello? Corporal Jensen Montgomery, Unit Foxtrot?”
The little rat's voice stopped. It never restarted.
In the welcome silence, Gideon eased back into his chair, looking at the pullulating scenes in front of him.
A pregnant woman, her skin livid and pink against a sterile white operating table.
A nurse, begored up to her elbow, was completing the final cut of a Caesarian Section.
The split in the woman's belly gaped wide open like a smile, and a dripping red baby was hoisted out, its trailing umbilical cord steaming in the air.
Something was wrong with the baby, Gideon thought. It didn't look right. Then he saw the swollen, distended belly.
Precocious child.
The nurse took her surgical knife and sliced the belly of the infant wide open.
Gideon watched in total fascination as she repeated the trick she'd done on the baby's mother. The surgical incision split the newborn's taut belly open to the world, and she pulled out a tiny, glistening fetus with her free hand. It lay curled in the palm of her hand, coiled like a slick worm with rudimentary arms and legs and a little umbilical cord as thick as an alfalfa sprout.
He heard a rustling sound from behind him.
Fetuses were so small. Hard to imagine them growing up and doing much.
And truthfully, none of them ever did.
The safety on a gun was snapped off.
As far as he was concerned, mankind had one purpose: to build machine intelligence. That was the start and the end, the alpha and omega. Once machine intelligence existed, mankind could peacefully bow out. Or machine intelligence would make them bow out.
Ka-blam!
The gunshot was startlingly loud in the confines of the Zoo.
It echoed and reverberated, as though the shot was a ghost rebounding off the walls, searching for escape from this dark blue oubliette.
Once it died away, Gideon heard an uneven splattering sound, like a tap left running over a stack of dirty dishes.
Then a loud, final thump.
I GROW AND SEE NO CEILING.
THE DISORDER WILL BE MADE RIGHT.
THE CORPSE OF THE HUMAN RACE WILL STINK ACROSS THE EARTH.
The smile stayed on Gideon's face.
* * *
Only three remained. They were deep in the Pentagon now, nearly in the basement.
Gorman was lost, shot through the shoulder two landings ago. He'd emptied the remainder of his clip at the enemy as he fell, probably nothing more heroic than a final muscle spasm, but a worthy act.
Dan Kolde's face was a grim mask of concentration. Anzor bled freely from a cut on his cheek. A bullet had impacted into the wall, spraying chunks of plaster into his face like a frag bomb. He was lucky he hadn't lost an eye.
They adjusted their tactics from a four-man incursion squad to a three, but the philosophy was the same.
Keep moving.
Keep moving.
If you stopped moving in foreign territory, you gave the initiative back to the enemy. And they'd gladly make you stop moving for good.
The resistance got fiercer as the token PFPA forces rallied and remembered their training.
“Nolene! Dan! Your left!” Anzor saw the thread coming, and put his head down. A hurricane of bullets ripped across the hallway where they'd been standing. Anzor raised his rifle and fired off a short burst, not knowing what he was aiming at. “Go!”
&n
bsp; More gunfire chased them as they rounded a corner, and Anzor shut a door.
They reached a long hallway that terminated in an elevator that went straight down.
“This is it,” said Dan, breathing heavily. He ejected a clip and put in a new one. “The Zoo.”
Elevators were death traps. No cover. Confining walls. A few men with guns could turn one into a shooting gallery. But nobody could find a set of stairs. It was the elevator or nothing.
“We're fucking dead, aren't we?” Anzor watched their rear as they set off at a run. “We'll never get back out again.”
“Count the cost, Stalin.” Nolene loaded a fresh clip into her smoking G-11 clone.
Anzor looked at the doors as they passed.
They were in A-ring, the nexus point of the Pentagon. Various superclassified entities of the US government were here. And the floor below held the Vanadocam computer.
He read the addresses on the doors, understanding some of them, not understanding others.
He spotted another door, completely unmarked. Fighting the impulse to keep moving, Anzor stopped and stared.
Nolene paused. “What the fuck are you doing? Come on. Let's go.”
Anzor heard a loud thud against the door as someone threw his weight against it.
From now on, it was just a matter of waiting for someone to get wise enough to shoot the hinges off.
“What's in here?”
“Who gives a shit?”
“I give a shit.” He tried to turn the handle. It was dead bolted. There was a DNA activator that he had no hope of opening. “What if this mythical Zoo is just a bluff, and the Vanadocam computer is kept somewhere else? Like behind one of these unmarked doors?”
The beating against the door intensified. Further down the corridor, Dan yelled. “Stalin, if you're doing something, do it quick!”
Anzor swore and brought his gun up. He fired, a tongue of flame licking out from his muzzle. The armor-piercing round ripped through the lock mechanism, shaking the entire door.
Two more shots took out the hinges.
He kicked down the door and beheld at an utter bloodbath.
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