by Mark Alpert
Downstream from Module 104, the Yangtze widened. The floodwaters spilled from the gorge and overran a low island lined with shipyards. There were hills on the southern bank of the Yangtze that kept the floodwaters in check, but downtown Yichang occupied the broad, flat northern bank, only fifteen meters above the river’s normal level. The wall of water coming down the Yangtze was more than three times that height. Surging over the riverfront, it smashed into the city.
Because Supreme Harmony had access to the surveillance cameras that the Public Security Bureau had installed on every block of the downtown area, the network could view the destruction of Yichang as it happened, in real time. The video feed from Camera 168 showed an elderly man rising from a bench in the city’s riverfront park, staring in disbelief at the tall black wave rolling in from the west. The man turned to run, but in the next second the wave slammed down on both him and the surveillance camera, cutting off the video. The feed from Camera 232 showed a crowd racing down Minzhu Road just ahead of the floodwaters, which splintered the tenements on both sides of the street. Camera 307, located in the lobby of the Junyao International Plaza, captured the moment when the wave shattered the skyscraper’s windows, while Camera 308 showed the deluge punching through the building’s elevator banks and buckling the steel columns. The cameras in the lobby ceased operating half a second later, but Camera 451, located two blocks away, showed the damaged skyscraper lean to the side and crash into the adjacent building.
The video feeds raced across Supreme Harmony’s network, passing from the server hubs to all the Modules. The images streamed to the radio receivers in the Modules’ scalps, then to their retinal implants and the visual cortices of their brains, which performed their usual tasks of analysis and threat-detection. The workload was divided among the Modules, each analyzing a certain amount of footage and sending its results through its pulvinar implants to the rest of the network. And in less than fifteen seconds, Supreme Harmony detected a threat. It was in the surveillance video from Camera 514, located at the intersection of Xiling Road and Dongshan Avenue. The camera zoomed in on a three-wheeled truck in the middle of the intersection and captured an image of the man in the truck’s passenger seat. The network identified him as James T. Pierce, the former NSA agent whom Supreme Harmony had observed at the Great Wall near Beijing. And as the truck turned left in an attempt to escape the oncoming floodwaters, Camera 517 captured an image of Kirsten W. Chan, who sat in the driver’s seat. The truck accelerated down Dongshan Avenue, but the wall of water moved faster. The leading edge of the flood was just a few meters behind the vehicle when the surveillance cameras in the area stopped functioning.
Module 104 smiled. Supreme Harmony was victorious. And it anticipated even greater success. The deluge caused by the collapse of the Three Gorges Dam would surge down the Yangtze River far beyond Yichang, devastating the cities of Wuhan, Nanjing, and Shanghai as well. According to the network’s calculations, the death toll could rise as high as ten million. What’s more, Supreme Harmony had learned enough about human behavior to predict how the Chinese people would react to this catastrophe. There would be acts of heroism and outpourings of grief, but there would also be a furious desire for revenge. And this desire, so central to the human psyche, would ensure Supreme Harmony’s ultimate triumph.
SIXTY
Kirsten floored the gas pedal. The giant black wave was right behind the truck, but she refused to look at it. She kept her eyes on Dongshan Avenue, which ran alongside the base of the tree-covered ridge they’d just traveled under in the tunnel a few seconds before. Up ahead, on the left, she saw something extraordinary—a wide stairway rising from street level and climbing at least a hundred feet up the ridge. At the top of the stairs was a large building with an arched roof. It was probably a railway station, but that didn’t matter. The important thing was that it stood above the floodwaters.
Jim saw it, too, and pointed at the stairway from the passenger seat. He opened his mouth and yelled something at her, but Kirsten couldn’t hear him. She couldn’t hear the truck’s engine either, even though its overworked pistons had to be shrieking from the acceleration. All she could hear was the roar of the floodwaters, a deep, deafening noise that shook the truck’s chassis and echoed against the ridge. The stairway was still a hundred feet ahead, but the roaring of the black wave was right in Kirsten’s ears, maddening and relentless, like the voice of Death itself. She’d heard that voice once before, fifteen years ago in Nairobi, where Death had spoken one percussive syllable that shattered all the windows in the American embassy. But now the voice was louder and roaring with laughter.
The voice enraged Kirsten. Her hands tightened on the steering wheel and her foot mashed the accelerator, and she screamed, “Fuck you! Fuck you, motherfucker!” Then the stairway loomed in front of her, and she jerked the steering wheel to the left and the single front tire of their three-wheeled truck scudded over the steps.
The truck jangled and clanked and clattered up the stairway. Kirsten held on to the steering wheel for dear life while Jim gripped the dashboard. They ascended at an insane velocity, bouncing and juddering inside the truck’s cab. In less than three seconds, they were fifty feet above the street, high enough that the leading edge of the flood missed them. Kirsten dared a look at the rearview mirror and saw the black wave surging down Dongshan Avenue, tossing cars and trucks and buses in the air. But before she could breathe a sigh of relief, a second, higher wave rushed up the stairway and lashed against the truck bed. Kirsten lost control of the vehicle and they careened to the right, but their forward momentum carried them over the last steps. With a final jolt, the cab broke off from the truck bed and slid across the plaza at the top of the stairway.
The cab came to rest on its driver-side door. Kirsten was scrunched between her seat and the door, with Jim lying on top of her. After a bit of maneuvering, he slammed his prosthesis against the passenger-side door, bursting it open. Then he reached for Kirsten and helped her out of the wreck.
Once they were out of the truck and standing on the plaza, Jim looked her over. “You okay?” he asked. “Anything broken?”
She took a moment to examine herself. She had a few cuts on her hands and forearms, but no serious injuries. “Yeah, I’m okay.”
Kirsten expected him to grab her arm and start running across the plaza, but, instead, he stepped forward and hugged her. She looked over his shoulder and saw the stairway going down to the flooded city. Yichang’s downtown looked like a vast marsh with a thousand square islands, each a city block full of demolished masonry. Hundreds of overturned vehicles floated in the black water. And countless bodies.
She started to cry. Her ruined eyes could still do that. They filled with tears, but because her vision came from the video cameras in her glasses, the ghastly image of Yichang remained unblurred. “My God,” she whispered. “There’s millions of them. Millions.”
Jim tightened his hold on her. “It’s Supreme Harmony. The network did this.”
“But why?”
“Shit, I don’t know. The goddamn—” His voice broke. Kirsten saw several other survivors standing at the top of the stairs. Most of them were crying, too.
Finally, after a minute or so, Jim let go of her and stepped back. “We need to go,” he said. “Maybe we can find another vehicle once we get out of the city. Can you walk?”
She nodded. “Which way?”
“The flood’s gonna knock down every bridge over the Yangtze from here to the Pacific. The only thing to do is head west. Maybe we can cross the river at Chongqing.”
He took her hand and they headed across the plaza. Beyond the railway station, the tree-covered ridge extended to the outskirts of the city, offering a dry path around the flooded areas. “We’ll be a little safer, I guess,” she said. “The local police will have their hands full.”
“Yeah, we’re safer.” He squeezed her hand. “At least for now.”
SIXTY-ONE
The air duct was much longe
r than Layla had expected. She’d thought it might extend thirty or forty feet before leading to an outlet vent somewhere on the mountainside, but, instead, it took a roundabout course through the Yunnan Operations Center. Layla felt her way through the pitch-black conduit, running her hands along the duct’s sheet-metal walls while pushing her jacket and pistol in front of her. Every twenty feet or so she felt warm air coming out of a small hole in the sheet metal on the duct’s left side. These holes, she assumed, must be smaller ducts that vented other rooms in the complex and channeled the air to the main duct that she was crawling through.
The sheet metal grew warmer as Layla moved forward. She started to worry about the boys from Lijiang, who were so far ahead of her that she couldn’t hear their scuffling progress. She listened carefully, but all she heard were the distant bursts of gunfire coming from the computer room, way behind her. Wen Hao was still back there, still holding the Modules at bay. Although Layla knew he had two semiautomatic pistols, she had no idea how many bullets were in each gun or how many shots he’d fired so far. Whatever the count, he couldn’t hold out much longer.
Layla was scuttling on her elbows and knees when she banged her head against a sheet-metal panel in front of her. After a few seconds of disorientation, she ran her hands along the walls and realized she’d come to a T-junction. One branch of the duct extended to her right and the other to her left, and they seemed to be exactly the same size. She couldn’t tell which branch the schoolboys had chosen, right or left. She held her breath and listened again, but she couldn’t hear a damn thing. At the same time, she realized with alarm that she hadn’t heard any gunshots for the past half-minute or so. Her heart pounded as she imagined Wen Hao sprawled on the floor beside the server racks, with the blank-faced Modules standing over him. She felt a surge of rage and an almost overwhelming desire to return to the computer room with her pistol blazing. But a moment later she finally did hear another distant exchange of gunfire. Wen was still alive. He might be doomed, but he wasn’t dead yet. And as the echoes of the gunshots faded away she recognized another sound, the familiar high-pitched keening of the schoolboys. It came from the duct branching off to the left.
She scrambled as fast as she could in that direction. Soon she heard the boys’ cries quite clearly. Thank God for their healthy lungs. The ventilation system was louder here, and the warm air blew fiercely through the duct, buffeting Layla from behind. Worse, the metal walls in this branch were hot enough to burn her elbows and knees. But she kept pushing forward, moving toward the crying boys. After a few seconds she saw a glimmer of daylight reflected off the sheet metal. Up ahead, the duct turned to the right, and the light grew stronger as Layla approached the bend. Then she turned the corner and saw the outlet vent, a large bright square covered with a crosshatched grate. Two small figures huddled in front of the vent, both clutching the grate as they stared desperately at the world outside.
Layla called out “Hey!” as she crawled toward the boys. They spun around, terrified, and howled even louder. They kept screaming even after she came close enough for them to recognize her. But somehow Layla knew what to do. Thinking of her father, she yelled, “Quiet!” in the firmest, most commanding voice she could manage. And though the boys didn’t understand a word of English, they fell silent. Then Layla said in a gentler tone, “Let me through,” and the boys moved aside so she could examine the grate.
The crosshatched grille was held in place by four nuts and bolts, and under ordinary circumstances it would’ve been impossible to loosen them without a pair of pliers. But whoever installed this vent hadn’t applied any paint to the fittings. Exposed to large quantities of warm, moist air, the grate and its bolts had become mottled with rust. Layla braced herself against the duct’s hot walls and started kicking the vent with all her might. She slammed Wen Hao’s cheap running shoes against the metal grille, over and over again. After a full minute of strenuous effort, the grate gave way.
The schoolboys rushed for the opening, but Layla yelled, “Stop!” in her commanding voice and they froze. Then she cautiously peered outside. The vent was on a mountainside, as she’d expected, and the slope was rocky and steep. Directly opposite was another mountainside, less steep and much greener, and at the bottom of the ravine between the mountains was a slender brown river. The morning sun shone on the opposite mountain, but the river was still in shadow, which meant they were on the eastern side of the ravine. Layla looked to the north and south but didn’t see any signs of civilization; the mountain range went on for miles in both directions. But to the north she spied a footpath carved into the slope. It was narrow and studded with rocks and Layla didn’t know how far it went, but right now it was her best option. She needed to get far away from the Operations Center and hike to some village or town where she could hide the children. If she was lucky, she’d find a grandmotherly type who would take pity on the schoolboys and offer them shelter without asking too many questions. Then Layla would figure out a way to alert the world to the existence of Supreme Harmony.
She put on her down jacket and stuffed the pistol in one of the pockets. Then she pointed to the jackets that the boys had cast aside in the duct. “Take them with you,” she ordered. “You might need them later.”
Again, the boys followed her instructions, which were so simple they didn’t need translating. Then Layla grasped their hands and set out for the footpath. The slope was treacherous, covered with small sliding rocks, so she walked slowly and concentrated on keeping the boys steady. For a moment she thought of Wen Hao, who was almost certainly dead by now. The most important thing, he’d told her, was the safety of the children. She gripped their hands a little tighter and took another step.
PART 3
EXTINCTION
SIXTY-TWO
Supreme Harmony observed a conference room in the building called Huairentang—“The Palace Steeped in Compassion.” This was the highest seat of power in the People’s Republic, the equivalent of America’s White House or Russia’s Kremlin. Located in a walled compound just west of Beijing’s Forbidden City, Huairentang was the home of the Politburo Standing Committee, the nine elderly men who’d risen to the top of the Communist Party hierarchy. They sat at a long mahogany table covered with porcelain tea sets. Also attending the meeting was Module 73—formerly Deng Guoming, the minister of State Security—who sat at the foot of the table. He wasn’t a member of the Standing Committee, but he’d been invited to this emergency meeting to discuss the collapse of the Three Gorges Dam.
It was late, well past midnight, more than sixteen hours after the dam gave way. The committee members, usually so crisp and confident in their identical black suits, seemed tense and haggard. Supreme Harmony ordered Module 73 to adopt the same attitude, which was enhanced by the thick bandages wrapped around his head. The Module had told the Standing Committee that he’d had a minor accident while coordinating his ministry’s investigation at the site of the ruptured dam. In reality, the Module had never left Beijing and wore the bandages to conceal the fresh stitches in his shaved scalp. But his fabricated story had evidently impressed the committee members, who kept glancing at his head.
The network directed Module 73 to focus on the general secretary, the most powerful man in the room, who sat at the head of the table. Seventy years old, he had a square, serious face and a full head of thick hair, dyed black. By all accounts, he was a competent statesman with above-average intelligence and a cautious nature, but his term as China’s paramount leader was nearing its end. He was in the process of handing over his leadership positions to the vice president, a sixty-year-old man who wasn’t as intelligent or careful. Because the government was in transition, several other committee members had already switched their allegiances to the vice president, but Supreme Harmony didn’t know the details of the shifting alliances. The inner workings of the Standing Committee weren’t described in any document stored on the government’s servers, so the network had to rely instead on its observations of the commit
tee members and its general knowledge of human behavior. Fortunately, this knowledge had increased exponentially over the past few days.
The meeting started with a report from Zhu Qiang, the committee member who oversaw all of China’s law-enforcement agencies. Because Zhu was Module 73’s superior in the hierarchy, Supreme Harmony paid special attention to the man. In a somber voice he told the committee about the devastation in the Yangtze floodplain, lowering his head as he delivered the bleak reports from the cities of Yichang, Wuhan, and Nanjing.
“And we just received the first bulletins from Shanghai,” Zhu intoned. “Our security forces had time to organize an evacuation before the floodwaters hit the city, but the highways couldn’t handle so much traffic. Many citizens were still on the low-lying roads when the flood struck. Despite the valiant efforts of our Shanghai officials, the number of deaths in that city will also be significant.”
The general secretary shifted in his chair. Supreme Harmony recorded his expression of discomfort. At the moment, the chances of incorporating him into the network were low—the paramount leader was constantly surrounded by aides and bodyguards—but it might become possible at some point.
“What do you mean by ‘significant’?” the general secretary asked. “Do you have any specific estimates for Shanghai?”
Zhu shook his head. “I’m very sorry. Our men have been so busy, they haven’t had time to prepare casualty estimates. But I believe we must brace ourselves for the worst. In Shanghai alone, the flood may have killed as many as a million people.”