by Russ Linton
We didn’t even get to say goodbye.
Eric used to say most people use stupid passwords they can easily remember. Names of loved ones, dates. Of course, most people don’t anticipate that kids who share their haunted memories will be hacking their account.
Password:
The password isn’t hard to guess, but getting the order and format for the date is the tricky part. Actually, I have two dates in mind, but the least painful one goes first; Mom’s yearly disappointment etched it into my brain—their anniversary.
Connie081287
Welcome, Crimson Mask. Please enter search phrase or file number.
“Jesus, even your computer calls you Crimson Mask.” I type in the first name that comes to mind.
Connie Harrington.
Accessing…
0 records.
Staring again at the blinking cursor, I’m not quite ready to type the next name that pops into my head. I go with the guts of the Augment program, “Project Peacemaker”.
Accessing…
1264 records. Sort by?
I sort the records by date and skim the titles. Most of it’s stuff you’d hear on the news, or read in magazines and newspapers, but this is unfiltered, raw data. I check reality against what I already know, or think I know. There’s always a gap between those. One file called “Peacemaker: A History” from a military journal catches my eye.
So far, nothing I didn’t read about in Mr. Hutton’s history class. During World War I, Germany tried to make soldiers that could breathe mustard gas. World War II saw America field the first Augment team. B-52, Minuteman, Fat Boy, Tomahawk, Hurricane; Augment Force Zero, the guys credited with ending the war with Japan. These were guys that had real powers, not just enhancements to stave off trench rot or keep their dicks from falling off from adding Europe’s brothels to their tour.
Russia launched their Augment program, and tensions escalated. Downtown Havana got turned into a parking lot. Chernobyl, where that mental patient Red Scourge left a trail of radioactive destruction across Eastern Europe. The world demanded change.
Didn’t happen.
How do you end a program of that magnitude? That was the billion-dollar question. They said it was over, but it really wasn’t. Some people thought of watching the Augments as a spectator sport, with property damage. Not until that day in September did everyone know the truth.
I was home sick, right after Dad had pulled his typical disappearing act. Convincing Mom I needed to stay home came easy those days. I’d complain about vague aches and pains. Stomach issues were good—not even your mother wants to confirm a raging case of diarrhea.
I remember having the TV remote in pieces. Watching the IR light flash as the buttons clicked had mesmerized me. I had started on a cartoon channel, but eventually settled on a local station in the middle of the “Good Morning” wherever-it-was-we-lived-then show. We might have been outside Dallas, I’m not sure. We weren’t there long. Suddenly, the anchors veered off the petting-zoo script. Monitors behind them showed a skyscraper billowing smoke into a cloudless sky.
Mom came to check on me, and when she entered the room I flipped the remote’s battery upside-down. I was only twelve, but even then I had grown tired of being protected. She never tried to change the channel, though. Not this time.
We stared in horror as the news played a clip of an Augment named the Djinn firing a molten ball of plasma from his palms clean through a smoking skyscraper. Dad beat the Air Force jets, but he didn’t get there right away. By then, the unbelievable heat had melted through the supports on the building. It broke in half, spilling girders, concrete and people into the streets below even as the base collapsed into a cloud of dust.
Mom had never cried in front of me. But her facade of optimism collapsed with the buildings. Tears flowed when the cameras caught Dad flying amid the massive wall of dust that rode the New York streets like a white tsunami. She frantically searched the corners of the screen when the view panned to the towers’ naked wreckage, jutting from the roiling debris cloud.
This was different than any other Augment attack. The Djinn came out of a program outside the normal government spheres. Secrets had been sold, or maybe a rogue group had gotten lucky with their own experimentation. He flew—not many of them do. And the destructive force behind his blasts was unheard of. Many of the shots the Djinn fired penetrated building after building and kept going. Missed shots cooked a flock of birds somewhere over the Atlantic, blinded an airline pilot, changed the temperature of the New York skies during the battle.
Talking heads speculated in the aftermath. But even though the Djinn disappeared into the clouds before the day ended, the media persisted, uncovering the use of Augments as proxy soldiers in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, South America. Cuba hadn’t prompted any real change. The connections to governments had simply been erased. In that brave new cloak-and-dagger world, secrets were lost. At some point the invisible wars outside had boiled over and rained down on a quiet New York skyline.
Not even the media knew exactly what happened in the dense smoke and confusion that day. Dad never spoke about it either. When he’d gotten home, he’d been burned. Everywhere I could see, his skin was pink with patches of brownish blisters. One hand was mummified in cotton gauze. No one could find whatever remained of the Djinn.
Please enter search phrase or file number.
Djinn
Accessing…
Subject security level: Declassified.
1 record.
The enter key clicks.
Asset: Abdel Khalid Mustafa. Status: Terminated
Playing beneath the text is a video. Vomit rises in my throat and looking away isn’t voluntary. It must be the Djinn. Or what used to be. His face is missing. As if punched into his skull.
Another one of Dad’s “wax on, wax off” sayings comes to mind—in a war, which is what any conflict between two Augments is, you never pull your punches. You attack with overwhelming force.
A white sheet inches up over the face and several men hoist the body onto a flat board near the edge of a ship railing. Five men stand by in Navy whites, Dad’s there too, his burns fresh and more gruesome than I recall.
The view pans out, and an aircraft carrier deck fills the screen. Planes arranged in tight lines crowd the space. A fade to black begins, and as darkness replaces the clear blue sky and neat rows of jets, one particular spot on the screen comes to life. Rocket flares hold back the blackness.
I stop the playback. Rewind. Playback. Rewind. Third time, I let it fade and the file closes. Twin rockets blasting into the sky. The Black Beetle soars upward from the carrier deck, only yards away from Dad.
Chapter 5
Please enter search phrase or file number:
The prompt blinks, waiting for the next query. It should have been the first. My brain can’t quite get the letters to my fingers. The thought of him and what he’s done, reduced a place I wanted to call home to the backdrop of a recurring nightmare. He took it all from me. But was he really working with Dad?
Black Beetle
Accessing…
Subject security level Delta. Please enter passcode to continue.
Another layer. I’ve been at this for a while. I glance into the safe room and check out the security monitors. Snow, snow, more snow. There’s no way my password-guessing skills will hold.
Copy the encrypted files, that’s the best move. Popping a thumb drive into a free port, I lean back and watch the filenames scroll. No reason to risk guessing at passwords. I can mess with decrypting the juicier files later, when he’s saving the world again and not on a feed run. Not sure how long the transfer will take, but there can’t be that much information.
What am I even doing? What has this turned into? Suddenly, this is more than a positional move to turn the tide on the deluge of secrets that have ruled my life. If he’s linked to the Black Beetle, Dad has to know what happened to her. Maybe that’s why he wasn’t there. Why he can’t
find her. But if he is working with the Beetle why all the theatrics?
I lean back in the chair, trying to make sense of what I’ve uncovered.
As the transfer of data to the thumb drive grinds, my stomach rumbles. I haven’t felt hungry like this in a long time. Digging through the well-stocked pantry at our old house was a subconscious activity. Going through the motions here is depressing, but my stomach apparently isn’t as picky as my taste buds. I head to the kitchen to forage.
The crackers I settle on are dry and flavorless. About the only thing that will wash the sawdust down is a nice cool glass of milk. I start to open the dead fridge. Right—the airlock.
Walking to Danger Bay, I hit the activation button on the keypad and watch the fiery red digits come alive. My palm hovers above the keys and an odd sensation strikes.
You search for heat when you live in a place like this. If you stand there long enough, right before the pad resets, you’ll imagine you can feel the heat behind the tiny LEDs, but it’s never really there. A phantom sensation normally, but right now a warmth extends along my palm, all the way up my forearm.
My first guess is it’s some kind of short. I sniff the panel. No telltale odor of burning wires, but there’s a metallic odor I can’t identify. With a fingertip I trace the keypad housing, the door jam, the seam. A whisper of warmth emanates from the unheated space of the airlock.
I punch in the code, and the door grinds open. That whisper of heat fills the central hall, pushed on by a thick, acrid smell. At the far end of the chamber, the exterior door remains closed and sealed tight. It won’t be that way much longer.
A red-hot, molten trail of steel inches its way up the door.
Oh, shit.
Black metal pincers rip through the glowing trail. Molten metal drips from the claw as a tortured screech fills the small space, and the reinforced door peels away easy as a sheet of tin.
My hands won’t cooperate. My eyes won’t leave the claw. Sunlight reflected from the perpetual blanket of snow outside burns past the glow of superheated metal. Pure, white light wreathes a cancerous, insect-like figure.
It’s him.
Got to get the code right. Fat finger the keys, reset. Double-tap a number, reset. The airlock door finally rumbles shut as the exterior door disappears into the blinding white.
Racing toward the library, I check the red proximity alert in the central hall. No way I didn’t hear the klaxon spine-rattler. The red light stares vacantly from the ceiling. No alarm. I head for the safe room in a panic and I yank the thumb drive on the way by.
The exterior cameras in the safe room should show the problem. But, according to them, there is no problem. The front door is intact and the powdery white runs uninterrupted for miles. Then I notice the time stamp in the corner repeating, over and over. The security has been bypassed.
A feeble, orange light springs to life in the main hall from the top of the door to Danger Bay. Tiny sparks leap into the air and smolder on the floor. A dripping, molten line crawls down the door. It won’t be long.
*
Before I’ve given any conscious thought, the safe room door is secured, the thermite released, the beacon activated, and I’m standing on the edge of the steps leading into the pod. A tortured moan signals the Danger Bay’s door being peeled open and tossed aside.
Even behind the safe room door I should be afraid. But as I listen to and feel the mechanical death machine charge down the hallway, my body goes numb. I reach up and finger the bruise on my arm. Floor plates, shelves, spare parts clatter outside the door. The drone collides with the safe room door with the force of an artillery shell and a sound that vibrates in my head but I don’t even flinch.
The heat, the cold, the residue of my dad’s anger, the lingering pain, all disappear. I can’t shake that surreal moment where I watched the outer door of this prison ripped to shreds and tossed into the vast arctic landscape. That door was torn wide open, never to close again. I’m free today.
I could leave. Right now.
Another one of Dad’s heroic sayings is that bravery isn’t about taking risks. Being a hero is about executing the right actions at the right time. Careful planning, precision, training, you let it take over. You act without thinking and train so that those actions will be the correct ones.
But if I follow that advice, I’m in the pod right and ready to launch to safety. All that stupid talk about tossing cars around and here, he’s been training me to run. To climb into a pod whose destination has never been revealed. A pod that could be my own little glass coffin for all I know. Melt the data, shoot the kid into space. Would he do that?
The door resonates again and the room shakes. I stare into the pod.
If he wanted me dead, I couldn’t stop it. It would have happened long ago. Hell, he could’ve just flown off and not come back—it would’ve been that easy. Maybe he set up the robot attack? Why would that make any sense? He could have popped my head like a pimple last night. Do they even have CSI North Pole? Who the hell would find out?
An orange knot blossoms on the safe room door near the ceiling.
Whatever his plans, he’ll find my steaming corpse back here before I blindly climb into his control ship. I’ll show him exactly what I can do. Wait right here and confront him with the information. I’m not helpless.
I dig out my multi-tool and get to work.
During all the time spent daydreaming in the pod, I figured out I couldn’t program the navigation system. The pod doesn’t fly so much as fire. It’s all a matter of adjusting the initial trajectory. The control software is also all in Russian. But between the language barrier, a lack of GPS coordinates, and no knowledge of good landing sites, if I tried to aim it into my old neighborhood, I’d probably end up in the Pacific or the side of a mountain.
So I leave the navigation alone and focus on rewiring the launch system. I’ll dry fire the launch tube, keeping the pod on the loading arms. The EMP backwash will hopefully disable the robot before it disembowels me.
With the rewiring finished, I shimmy into the pod and slide the cockpit closed. There’s the familiar hiss and click followed by pure silence. The quiet drives home how much noise, how much heat, how much atmosphere I was baking in out there: the odor of melting metal, the hiss and clatter of glowing shards skittering across the floor, the increasing warmth.
Warmth? Where has this damn robot been the past two years?
My laughter fills the pod. I haven’t laughed like this in… forever. Even that’s hilarious. My sides ache and unused face muscles are hurting all the way to the back of my neck. I can’t stop. I don’t want to stop. If this is one big fail, dying laughing in the Black Beetle’s face isn’t a bad way to go. Those pincers can pluck me from the pod and my final act will be a one-finger salute; the laughter amplifies. I am going crazy. I’m an Augment now, I’m Mental Man, nutso-supreme. Put me in a pair of fucking tights.
Eyes watering, I peer through the pod’s tiny window. The safe room door is tougher going and the glowing metal has stopped halfway down. Strategic cuts begin to appear along the seams.
Laughter fades into the laser cutter’s muffled buzz as the door liquefies. Glowing embers ping off the pod like fireflies dancing outside the viewport. One comes to rest on the viewport, throbbing with heat. I place my palm on the glass but it stays cool as the ember dies.
Finally. I put my finger on that freaking red button. I’ve left several wires dangling from the panel with their exposed coppery ends twisted together. It’s a hack job. Might not even work. Only now does it hit me that this has to be the single dumbest idea I’ve ever had.
Cries of wrenching metal penetrate the thick hull of the pod. The glass is fogged over and I wipe it clean. A pincer pierces the bottom corner of the safe room door. The robotic hand shakes fiercely under the strain and a second pincer punches through along the glowing cut. Globs of molten slag slap onto the floor.
No laughing now. My hands are shaking. If this doesn’t work
, I won’t have time to rewire the button to escape.
With a shuddering heave, a chunk of the safe room door breaks loose. This door doesn’t peel neatly but shatters along the weakened seams leaving jagged, dripping edges. In the open void, a glowing, honeycombed eye peers inside.
Can’t rush this. Have to wait. The EMP is a close-range side effect, not a directed weapon. The pod, the equipment in the safe room, that’s all shielded. I’m only guessing Hannibal Gundam isn’t.
It forces into the breach. I scream, a deafening echo in the pod, and mash the launch button. With a static pop, the pod rattles and the loose button whips out of my hand. Darkness floods the viewport, broken only by a diffuse, fiery glow.
Chapter 6
William Drake smiled the confident smile of a man with nothing to hide. It was a talent. “Gentlemen, ladies, I hope this presentation answered any questions you may have regarding your future investment. I’m afraid we’re pressed for time, but I can perhaps address any minor concerns before the lunch break.”
He attempted eye contact with each of the twelve investors. Impassive masks chiseled by innumerable business deals, shady and otherwise, stared back. A few bent studiously over crisp vinyl folders containing a decade’s worth of his hard work. Nothing short of groundbreaking science, Drake mused. It would be impossible for them not to be impressed. There was little indication of this, however.