Another six-person team burst through the front entrance. Gamble shouted, “Gemma! Look at their weapons!”
I did. I knew what they were—and what they had done to me. To the nanocloud. To us. A fury born out of Greave’s Taser and the death and anguish it had produced boiled within me.
“Nano. We must act preemptively.”
I charged toward the men; my hands flashed, impelling a wide surge of nanomites. They deployed a wall of mirrors as a barrier of both shields and deflectors—and ahead of that wall they pushed a great, crackling pulse of electricity as insulation.
A veritable storm struck the soldiers of the second team: Lightning sizzled; a concussion wave slammed them. The glass in the lobby windows exploded outward, sending shards of glass onto the pavement, flinging the men themselves through the broken window casings.
I raced forward and leapt through an empty window frame, ready to finish what I’d started. I needn’t have worried: The six men who sprawled on the concrete were unconscious. Their Taser-like guns had burst into flames and lay charring nearby.
“Nano. Is anyone seriously injured?”
These men will require medical attention, but they will recover.
“Okay. Thank you.”
Now I needed to do what I could to mitigate the damage my actions would create if word of them were to get out.
“Nano, please—”
I whipped my head around as a shout echoed out of the dark.
“We have her, General!”
Other disembodied voices shouted their agreement.
“Move in!”
A woman.
Cushing.
Two things flashed through my mind in that moment: One was that the attack on Dr. Bickel had been a ruse—a ploy—intended to draw me out. The second was the memory of that awful nightmare I’d had in which Cushing and her people stormed the safe house and snared me in nets. I could still feel the weight of those nets pinning me down.
The horror of that memory sent adrenaline gushing through my body; the rush of boots on the pavement drove me to action.
Thermal imaging, Gemma Keyes. Four individuals.
“Got it.”
In the moment it had taken to convey messages between us, I acted. Rotating both hands, I formed balls of fire and threw them. Again. Twice more. The nanomites drove the missiles to their destinations.
When the first bolus of pure energy reached its target, a man’s scream shredded the night. No scream is ever pleasant; still, there is something so very primal and disturbing in a grown man’s unreserved shriek of pain.
Quadruple that horrific sound: My projectiles had reached their intended destinations—the soldiers wearing thermal imaging goggles. I moved ahead; I couldn’t pause to consider how the fireballs’ intense light had fried the soldiers’ open retinas.
I had to end this.
I brought my hands together and grew a sphere of brilliant current between my splayed fingers. I tossed it above my head where, like a living disco ball, it illuminated the area around me.
Cushing.
There she was, shaking with rage, waving her hands in my direction. “Deploy the nets! Take her!”
Bodies littered the ground; only two of her people remained on their feet. One of them searched in vain for me and babbled, “But I can’t see her! Where is she?” He carried an unfamiliar-looking tactical rifle—as did the other soldier.
That guy, with a last look at the bodies scattered around him, shook his head, and dropped his rifle on the pavement. “I’m unarmed! Don’t,” his voice dropped off. “Please, don’t.”
Guess he didn’t have a word for what had decimated all but two of eighteen men in less than four minutes. I sent a stream of nanomites to harmlessly put him out.
Cushing pointed at the last of her soldiers. “Aim straight ahead and fire! Take her now!” Like a cartoon caricature, Cushing was hopping from foot to foot in frustration.
The solder aimed dead ahead, depressed the trigger, and deployed a net. The net expanded and flew twenty feet; weights fastened to each corner of the net expanded the net and brought it down—but I was well away from its reach.
A flick of my wrist sent the last soldier to his knees and onto his face.
Gamble rushed toward Cushing; the security guard, eyes wide, kept pace with Gamble. I stepped aside and let them pass.
“General Cushing, you are under arrest. Get on your knees.”
Leaving Cushing to Gamble, I sprinted back to the building: Now came the tricky part. An untried, unpredictable move. But first, I needed a reset point.
“How much time, Nano? How much time has passed since we responded to Cushing’s attack?”
Seven point five minutes, Gemma Keyes.
“Mark that time, Nano.”
Seven and a half minutes? Was that all? It seemed like an hour and yet it felt like the blink of an eye. I’d heard of the fog of war; perhaps that is what I was experiencing.
“Gamble. Gather everyone into the lobby. Quickly.
With Cushing in tow, Gamble shouted, “Back into the lobby! Now!”
The reporters who had run from the scene raced back. Their excitement, in its uncompassionate, predatory frenzy, grated on me: All they wanted was the big story.
Sorry. Not gonna happen.
“Nano. Is everyone who witnessed this event, other than Cushing’s soldiers, inside the building?”
Yes, Gemma Keyes.
I sent squadrons of mites into the soldiers who had fallen outside with orders for the nanomites to send them into a deeper sleep state and to repair what injuries they could.
Inside, I disbursed nanomites to the twenty or so reporters and their crews who milled about in the lobby and to the FBI media liaison and security guard. Within moments, they (and the FBI’s courageous young security guard) sank to the floor, unconscious.
I had almost overlooked the lone reporter and the cameraman who had kept his camera “rolling” during the melee. The two of them crouched behind the security station reviewing their “take.” I sent the nanomites. As quickly as the streams of mites reached them, they crumpled to the ground, sedated. Nanomites flooded the camera, deleting the video.
Last of all I pointed to Cushing. She sagged, and Gamble lowered her to the floor.
Soldiers and press lay like scattered cord wood on the lobby floor. Gamble and I were the only people in the lobby who were awake, and his eyes cut around the eerie scene, looking for me. With a wave of my hand, the mites uncovered me.
Gamble was breathing heavily. “What now, Gemma? Why did you do that, make them all unconscious?”
I picked my way over the prostrate bodies until I reached him. “Because I can’t have them talking about or reporting on what they saw—or what I did. While they are unconscious, the nanomites will erase their memories—everything that happened from the moment Cushing stormed the building.”
Gamble’s expression screamed incredulity. “How can they do that?”
“Consider it nano brain surgery, the removal of any synapses created during the past ten or eleven minutes. At the same time, the nanomites will implant chemical suggestions in place of the removed memories. I expect these people to be confused when they wake up, a bit disoriented, and susceptible to suggestion. When they compare notes, they will begin to share and agree as to what happened—and with each agreement, the ‘memory’ will solidify.”
I muttered, mostly to myself, “I just hope no one questions how they all remember the same details so exactly.”
Streams of nanomites returned to me soon after, reporting the completion of their tasks. Gamble and I had, at best, seven or eight more minutes to tidy up the scene.
“Come on. We need to haul all the unconscious soldiers into the lobby and pile them in a group. When they come to, you and Deputy Dawg over there will have your hands full.”
When Gamble just shook his head, I pushed him.
“Hurry. We only have a few minutes.”
He and
I dragged the outside soldiers (quite unceremoniously, I might add) through the lobby doors and sat them against a wall. A total of eighteen soldiers and one general sprawled against a wall when we finished.
“I wonder where agents Trujillo and Black are.” Their absence bothered me. A lot.
We piled the soldiers’ guns against the opposite wall. Gamble studied one of the “net guns” and grunted. “A Taurus Sicherheitstechnik NetGun.”
“Snicker what?”
“Sicherheitstechnik. Safety technology. The German humane way of capture.”
“Great. I’ll thank Cushing for her humanity if she ever gets me with one of those.”
The security guard struggled to sit up. He was the first I’d asked the nanomites to wake, but I expected him to be confused and somewhat upset to find himself on the floor.
“Listen, Gamble,” I whispered. “That guard has a vague memory of helping you stand down this group of soldiers. You need to go give him a hand up and thank him for his support.”
“What?”
“You and your little buddy there handled what could have been a bloody standoff. You talked Cushing down while Wallace got Dr. Bickel to safety. The guard helped you. Backed you up.”
Gamble’s brows shot toward the ceiling. “Is that what he will think? Really?”
“Yes, it will be, but like I said, it will be a vague memory, not fully formed. You talk it through with him, give him some details, and it will gel. Solidify. Same thing with the reporters and soldiers. Even Cushing will have a similar hazy remembrance. By the time everybody talks about it—no matter how implausible—they will swear on a stack of Bibles that what they ‘remember’ is exactly what happened.”
“So, I just pretend that he remembers standing with me against Cushing, and he will agree with me?”
“I’ve seen you act. Insert a few particulars. Embellish the scene a little. Pretty soon, those will become his actual memories.”
We heard banging on the doors leading from the stairwell.
I jutted my chin toward the noise. “That’s probably Wallace and the reinforcements.”
“Why are they pounding?”
“I locked them out. I didn’t want them seeing us in action. By the way, how many staff do you think are in the building right now?”
Gamble ran a distracted hand through his close-cropped hair. “The administrative and support staff leave around 4:30. Maybe five agents?”
“Okay. Go talk to the guard. I’ll give you two minutes more before I unlock the doors.”
I approached the stairwell and sent a stream of nanomites through to knock out Wallace and the other agents and edit their memories.
“Keep them out for two minutes, Nano, but unseal the doors now.”
While those mites were working, the other nanomites and I went off to edit (and significantly redact) the media’s “take” from the press conference. Using the moment we acted against Cushing’s soldiers as a timestamp, the nanomites deleted every scrap of video, recording, photo, or text created after that moment. They left no electronic device untouched.
I hate to wax repetitive, but the digital world is awesome.
***
I called Zander later in the evening and filled him in on Dr. Bickel’s press conference, Cushing’s attack, how we’d defeated her storm troopers, and how the nanomites had rearranged what happened in the memories of all present. After Zander had heard the uncensored version, he was disappointed that he hadn’t been able to witness it in person.
“What I would have given to see Cushing handcuffed and led away! How did she react?”
“The nanomites half-drugged her, so she was docile, actually. Passive. Kept blinking like she wasn’t quite awake or aware of what was happening.” Smiling to myself, I wondered just how “passive” Cushing would be when the massive dose of neurotransmitters the nanomites had triggered wore off.
“Still, I would love to have been there.”
“Well, just watch the late news. The video should be entertaining. And while you’re watching the reporters, remember how the nanomites erased all remembrance of us taking out Cushing’s men and replaced their memories with Gamble and that security guard standing Cushing down.” I snickered and Zander joined me.
I watched the ten o’clock news that evening from the comfort and familiarity of the safe house’s basement room—and I pondered how strange human nature is. Sure, the segments were exciting. The reporters covered Dr. Bickel’s return from the dead (and, more importantly, Cushing’s arrest) with great enthusiasm. I even watched the online video snippet of Cushing being hauled off in handcuffs six times (and visualized Zander doing the same) before I could stop grinning.
What I mean about human nature being strange is that I could only imagine the crazy aftermath in the television newsrooms as the reporters and their crews returned and relayed the “reconstituted” events of the press briefing. Sure, we’d wiped their memories, but we couldn’t control for every variance or outlier in the timeline.
Perhaps some of the conversations went like this:
“The first time you called the newsroom, you said you were under attack.”
“We were! Those soldiers who burst through the doors had guns at the ready, just like a terrorist attack. At first, we thought they were terrorists. Got it all on camera, too.”
“Right. Good work, by the way. But I’m somewhat confused. The next time you called, you were outside, running around the parking lot, babbling like a crazy person about some electric light show—bolts of lightning knocking soldiers down, throwing them around. Flying balls of fire. Exploding windows.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Whadda you mean, what am I talking about?”
“I never ran around the parking lot. We stayed in the lobby while the FBI SAC hustled Dr. Bickel upstairs and two FBI guys—an agent and security guard—faced down a dozen and a half soldiers all on their own. You’re just upset that we somehow missed the FBI actually taking them down.”
“Wait. You never ran—listen, you clown. You called. I heard you running over the phone. Sounded like you were gonna have a heart attack, you were breathing so hard. You told me you were in the parking lot, then you said you were crouching beside the news van. It was obvious that you were terrified.”
“Are you nuts? We never left the lobby!”
“And I say you told me you were outside, running from the terrorists and from blasts of lightning. Bolts of electricity and orbs of fire flying through the air. That’s what you said.”
“Look, boss, I don’t know what you’ve been smoking—and, hey, I’m not judging here—but everyone on the crew will tell you the same thing: We never left the FBI building. As for thunder and lightning? Check the weather report. Clear as a bell.”
I laughed as I browsed the online news items. Detailed, descriptive, lively, vivid—and uniform. Certainly, too uniform, if uniformity was what you were looking for. As the nanomites had awakened the reporters, Agent Gamble had praised their calm behavior in the midst of bedlam and had repeated his off-the-cuff rendition of his and the security guard’s heroic stand against Cushing. All without firing a shot. According to him, the shattered lobby windows and the extensive damage to the lobby itself had been caused by the second wave of attackers when they breached the building.
Gamble had done a truly amazing job of adding bits of random factoids and tossing out colorful imagery as he and the other FBI agents debriefed the reporters and processed the soldiers.
Of course, those same details ended up in most of the reports.
So far, no one had noticed or commented on the missing twenty-three minutes between the start of Cushing’s attack and its resolution. Although the period of actual “action” had been much shorter, it had taken Gamble and me many feverish minutes of moving and staging bodies before I gave the nanomites orders to wake everyone up.
As for Gamble and the security guard? I’d be surprised if they didn’t receive commendat
ions. By the way, the nanomites made sure Wallace and the few agents in the building did not recall coming to our assistance only to find the elevator unresponsive and the doors to the stairwells locked.
Yup. Nice and tidy.
~~**~~
Chapter 6
She strode from the passenger boarding bridge into the Albuquerque Sunport, her heels making quick, indignant clicks on the tile floor. Today marked her third flight into this hick airport in less than six weeks, and Genie Keyes was one ticked-off woman.
As she threaded her way through the crowd, she blinked against the strong sunlight that poured through the airport windows. The flight attendant had announced that Albuquerque weather was a sunny, sixty-two degrees with a mild breeze—a far cry from the near-whiteout conditions at Reagan National this morning.
Genie slowed, paused, and gazed out the windows toward the Sandia Mountains—in particular, Sandia Crest. Bernalillo County might be enjoying a spate of balmy weather, but the Crest, rising five thousand feet above Albuquerque to crown the city’s eastern boundary, was rimed with fresh snow. Its frosty white ridgeline was blinding in its radiance.
It was, she admitted, actually quite a beautiful sight—as long as the snow was “up there” and not down in the Rio Grande Valley.
“At least I won’t be freezing my tail off this winter like I was back east,” she muttered—like that would in any way resolve or even lessen the dire straits she found herself in.
She located her flight’s baggage carousel and waited for the airline to offload its cargo. When her suitcases rolled onto the conveyer belt, she collected them, rolled them outside to the curb, and waved down a cab.
Her first order of business was a place to stay. She preferred an upscale hotel until she had time to shop around and select a satisfactory apartment. Unfortunately, she’d maxed out the third of her four credit cards when she’d put her belongings in storage and bought her airline ticket. With a grudging shrug of her shoulders, Genie acknowledged that the minimum monthly payments on the three cards would total more than the rent on her last apartment.
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