Othella (Arcadian Heights)

by Therin Knite

  Toppling Arcadian Heights.

  McClain wipes her manicured nails off with a napkin and fishes the tablet out of her purse. "Well, I admit it: you surprised me, Salt. This is a much bigger story than I thought you could provide."

  "Is that all it is? A story?"

  "That’s all it ever is."

  "What a sad view of the world you have."

  McClain smiles like I’m a toddler and she’s the god of a religion I’ve been indoctrinated into but don’t understand. "You call it sad. I call it practical." She licks her lips. "Now, is there a certain way you want me to approach this? I can’t imagine you called me here so I could upload pictures to the net."

  "I want you to go inside."

  Her smile fades. "The Heights? You want to put me in a deathtrap?"

  "I know a way out. I have the defense grid plans. I can help you escape."

  She leans over her empty pizza tray and whispers, "If you’re fucking with me, I will murder you."

  "No, you won’t." I knock my forehead against hers and meet those awful eyes. "You’ll hire someone else to do it for you. Because you only kill with your own hands when the target doesn’t run."

  A second later, she’s back on her side of the booth. "As long as we have an understanding, Salt."

  "I’m not screwing with you. This is how it is." I point at the tablet. "I don’t know exactly why. I’ve never figured it out." And Reggie was so disturbed by it he wouldn’t tell me. "They must be doing something to the recruits’ brains. Using some tech on them to make them produce viable research at an unsustainable rate. The exact process eludes me. But regardless, the result is death."

  McClain picks at her pointed canines with her tongue. "Why choose me as your accomplice? In fact, why not go in yourself?"

  "Because Q’s thugs take shots at me at least once a month. He knows I’m onto him. I have to change my residence every couple of weeks to stay ahead. And Q’s got his border guards on high alert for me. They’ll gun me down with burn rounds and toss my crispy, crunchy, blackened body in a ditch somewhere before I get two steps inside Jackson City. And even if I do find a way inside the city that doesn’t involve a coffin, I’ll still never get into the Heights. You are capable of infiltration where I am not."

  She sticks her pinky finger in her mouth and bites down hard. "But why me in particular? Why not another of my brethren?"

  I’ve been wondering that myself for the last several months, and there’s one conclusion that makes sense. One reason why the blocked sender would choose McClain over all the other muckrakers in this dirty world. I think of McClain’s disfiguring scars and say, "Because you’re the only one who’s crazy enough to actually do it."

  McClain yanks the bloody finger out of her mouth. Then she breaks into a wide, wide, too-wide grin. "Funny how often courage is confused with insanity." She tucks the tablet into her purse again, slides out of the booth, and marches off toward the exit with her skirt hiked up and her scars displayed for all the patrons to revile.

  I wait until the door bells stop jingling before I mutter to myself, "Funny. I don’t think courage is ever confused with insanity."

  2

  Quentin

  ( 6 Months Ago )

  They ambush me at lunch. I have a spoonful of chili heading for my open mouth, and then my office door flies off its track, sails across the room, and misses my head by less than four inches before it clangs against the wall. In the ruined doorway are three patrolmen, one with its leg still extended. It lowers its foot to the floor on the office side of the threshold and reaches for the burst rifle strapped to its back.

  I drop the spoon. It clatters to my desk, and globs of runny chili cling to the black plastic. "Howard, what’s going on?"

  His face is on my window, staring stoically. Two minutes ago, we were chatting for the first time in ages about something inane. Baseball. The last game we attended together before the final round of that useless chemo drugged him into a state of weakness and pain he never recovered from. We cheered for opposite teams that day, and when Howard’s was victorious, I dumped my entire bowl of fries on his head and ran away giggling.

  The armed patrolman advances into my office.

  Is this his payback for such a petty joke?

  I wish, but Howard doesn’t know joke from genuine threat anymore.

  "Howard, please. Whatever it is you’re angry about, we can work it out."

  Howard’s lips are drawn into a thin line, and he hums an ominous chord that resonates in my gut. "I told you to cease your nonsense, Quentin, and you did not."

  Now, all three of the patrolmen are in my office, lined up. One with a gun. One with nothing. One with a stack of papers.

  My research papers.

  "You broke into my room."

  "On the contrary, it is my room. My building. My Heights. You are a spokesman, Quentin, a figurehead. While you have important duties, you don’t have a right to do anything I consider detrimental to the survival of the community." Howard’s face drifts closer to me, sliding along the windowpane. "When I tell you not to do something, Quentin, you do not do it. I thought you understood this. But apparently you are too obstinate to obey me."

  The third patrolman drops my reports, and unbound papers scatter. The Whittaker Report bounces off the floor and opens to a page filled with blue highlights—death toll predictions for various impending catastrophes. The modified Heights plan lands face down. My research on Salt’s incursion glides over the carpet and skitters to a stop on the hard tile floor next to the window.

  Sweat collects beneath my collar, and I roll my chair away from my desk, possible solutions to this predicament sorting themselves by order of preference in my mind. Option One: Talk Howard down. It’s what I would do if this Howard was my Howard and not a distorted monstrosity. I strike it off the list.

  Option Two: Run. But the patrolmen are substantially faster than me, and Howard is in control of the gate. Even if I could evade capture without getting shot, I have nowhere to run. I can’t get past the defense grid—it does as good a job keeping things in as out.

  Option Three: Deactivate Howard. There’s a failsafe switch on the main terminal in Howard’s CPU room. It was designed to be used in an emergency situation, such as a malicious infection of the integrated AI. This exact situation. But Howard probably has his most sensitive components under heavy guard. I’ll be dead before I get within twenty-five feet of the room.

  What on Earth were we thinking when we designed the failsafe measure that way?

  Oh, yes: it can’t happen to us.

  All my options are non-options.

  "I am afraid, Quentin, that it may be time to restrict your role here at the Heights."

  The patrolmen drift closer.

  "Do not resist. You will be escorted to your apartment, where you will stay until you are needed. Do you understand now?"

  I don’t answer. Not when the armed patrolman wraps his hand around my wrist and drags me from the office. Not as the elevator descends, and I’m trapped in a box with my bones bending under the weight of a grip that was never meant to be used against me. Not when I’m paraded through the hallways like a prisoner of war past droids who stop and stare, unconcerned, before they return to work. Save for one, blond and blue eyed, who stares a beat longer than the rest and dares to fucking smirk.

  (Damn the world. I knew it.)

  Not when I’m shoved into my apartment and the door is locked behind me, my control panel disconnected. Not when I survey the ruin of the place I’ve called my home for twenty years: books on the floor, furniture overturned, priceless antiques broken, dented, and tossed aside.

  I don’t answer the menace that has replaced my best friend.

  And I won’t until its dying day.

  3

  Marco

  ( 6 Months Ago )

  They try to drown me at ten-oh-two.

  Savannah is within spitting distance, and I’m cruising along in a stolen Jag I plan to abando
n like a pretty puppy that grew into an ugly dog. I’ve got Queen jacked up to eleven, blaring from the speakers with the windows down, and every driver I pass gives me a death glare. I flip a few people off.

  About a mile downwind is a black van that’s been on my tail since Richmond, Virginia. I’ve taken back roads, dirt roads, loop-de-loops, and switched cars twelve times. Yet they’re still on me. I think maybe Q decided it was high time to train the military’s latest and greatest spy satellite on my movements. Thankfully, it doesn’t have an ion cannon you can use to shoot targets from space. That’s next year’s model.

  The jig is up. I’ve got firepower in the form of eight rifles, three handguns, and six pipe bombs in the car, but my pursuers aren’t normal boys and girls this time around. I let the van close in on me in North Carolina so I could glimpse the faces of the new group of goons trying to skin me. Except they aren’t goons. The Heights patrolmen are back in action. Q has flip-flopped tactics again.

  Make up your damn mind, will you?

  I speed toward Savannah with my arm hanging out the window, drumming against the hot siding of the Jag. A sudden heat wave settled into the southern states yesterday. Still cold in Nebraska, last I checked.

  Weaving around tractor-trailers and buses and soccer-mom SUVs, I begin to cross the newest bridge into the city. It stretches across the expanse of the Savannah River, mammoth support beams jutting up from the water, shiny and stainless. They lost the last bridge in the Christmas bombing. The one before that was a victim of the North American Freedom Militia. Bridges are popular battlefields these days.

  So it’s no surprise to me when the van starts to approach once I’m halfway across the bridge. No surprise when it pulls up beside me. No surprise when the doors fly open to reveal two armored patrolmen with guns pointed at my face.

  It’s no surprise at all. Which is why I grabbed the shotgun in the passenger seat five minutes ago. Locked and loaded. I slide the barrel through the window and fire.

  Buckshot shreds the side of the van. The driver swerves across the median line and into oncoming traffic. Car horns blare. People shout. The van recovers, engine growling as the driver tries to catch up to me again.

  One of the patrolmen leans out of the van and takes aim with a high-powered rifle. I toss the shotgun aside and grab the pistol at my hip. I aim using the side mirror and let loose four rounds. The first bores a hole in the van’s windshield, but it’s deflected by the driver’s reinforced helmet.

  The patrolman with the rifle starts shooting at one-second intervals. My back windshield shatters, a few shards slicing bloody trails through my exposed arm. The bulletproof suit in my trunk would come in handy right now, but I couldn’t wear it through the mandatory state checkpoint. Muttering fuck this country, I jam the pedal into the floor, and the car jets by several trucks bearing loads of metal pipes that’ll impale me if I screw up.

  Shots keep hot on my tail. Most of them hit the road. Some of them rip holes in other cars. One nails an elderly man in the neck when he dares to fill in the gap behind my Jag. The man’s head whacks the steering wheel, and his car cuts across two lanes. It crashes into the side of a tractor-trailer sporting a massive haul of logs.

  The carnage appears to unfold in slow motion. The tractor-trailer driver can’t compensate for the push from the old man’s car, and he careens into four lanes of oncoming traffic. He overcorrects and brakes too hard, and his entire load tips over at seventy-five miles per hour. The restraints break. Trees soar off the top of the pile and take out cars like guided missiles.

  Metal crunches. Glass shatters. Tires screech. People scream.

  The edge of the bridge draws closer.

  So does the van.

  Somehow, my pursuers manage to maneuver around the overturned tractor-trailer, and I can’t speed up to avoid them. The traffic at the end of the bridge is slowing to a crawl on both sides, and there’s not enough space in the median for me to cut through. I’m trapped.

  Shit.

  The van is by my side again. Two patrolmen are at the open door, ready and waiting. I can do nothing but watch as one of the men bombards the side of the Jag with a hail of large-caliber bullets.

  Fire engulfs my left leg.

  A tire blows out.

  I lose control, my hands slipping off the wheel when the car jerks to the right.

  I strike the guardrail going eighty-nine. The seatbelt holds me in place as the car leaps into the air, over the railing, and plummets into the river forty feet below. The Jag hits the water top first, dead stop, and every important organ in my chest rams against my ribcage.

  Muddy river water pours into the car through the open window and the missing back windshield. I fight the seatbelt, dizzy and disoriented. I’m upside down. Blood spurts from a gaping hole in my leg.

  I scream when the belt releases me and I tumble face first into the water. Can’t breathe. Can’t see. Toxic muck invades my nostrils.

  Is this it? Have I failed? Am I going to die in an overblown puddle filled with industrial runoff? Gone but not forgotten—remembered as a lunatic. But finally in peace, yeah? Peace? Doesn’t that sound nice?

  Peace like Anise and Clarissa and Reggie. No global conspiracies and world weights on my shoulders. No vendettas. How wonderful. Death.

  For me. But not for the kids the Heights will gobble down over and over and over for what could be centuries if no one vanquishes the monster.

  I can’t die yet. Not before McClain gets the scoop and gets out of there. Not until Q is dragged from his throne and tossed into a crowd bearing torches and pitchforks. Not yet.

  But when the time comes, I’ll gladly lead myself to rest. With a shotgun in my mouth in the middle of the woods somewhere no one will ever find me.

  Throat full of foul water, I drag myself out of the sinking car and into the murk. Thin beams of light pierce the surface of the river, and I swim toward them, my left leg burning at every kick. The powerful current sweeps me downriver as I near the surface, and when I break it, coughing and hocking and vomiting and praying in the same second, I’ve been swept underneath the bridge. Where no one can see me.

  Above, chaos has landed. Sirens. Shrieks of terror and agony.

  I paddle to one of the bridge’s foundation columns and hang on for dear life. As I catch my breath, I glance back to the place where my Jag went down. In time to see a black-clothed figure dive into the water.

  One last wave of adrenaline spreads like venom through my exhausted veins. I reach into my pants pocket and dig out the detonator for the bombs packed into my trunk. I raise it to my lips and kiss it—for you, Reggie—before I flip the switch cover.

  Cold and wet and hurting and hateful, I press the button.

  Water erupts in a violent cascade.

  A minute later, a helmet floats by.

  Except it isn’t a helmet.

  It’s a robotic head.

  4

  Quentin

  ( 6 Months Ago )

  It comes together like this:

  I rip up the floorboards in my bedroom to retrieve a supply box I created eighteen years ago for the worst possible emergency situations. The box contains medical supplies, army rations, flashlights, two guns, and a prototype of the first flex tablet model. Behind my water heater, which is accessible from the hallway, is a feed line that lets me gain access to the community security system. Using a list of instructions written by a good friend of mine, the sheet of lined paper yellow with age, I tap into the camera feeds.

  My first order of business is figuring out exactly how Clarissa Salt’s plot unfolded. So I access the security files from the day Howard reactivated her and track her every movement. Sometimes I lose her, and I have to backtrack and try again. It takes me hours that become days that become three weeks in which I hardly eat or groom myself. The patrolmen drop by once with two grocery bags full of food I don’t like. They refuse to allow me a glimpse of the hallway.

  When I get my first clue, I pause the video,
stare, and rewind. I watch it again. And again. And again. For the first two weeks after her reconfiguration, Salt does nothing out of the ordinary. But one day, out of the blue, she aborts her usual operations and travels up to the sixth-floor fake dorms for new recruits. She enters the room that was hers for five minutes, where she remains for less than two, and then reemerges and continues her normal daily agenda.

  She retrieved something from the dorm room. What was it?

  The answer comes eight days later. My best guess is that her reconfigured code contained several command lines with specific date triggers. Howard, in his infected state, must not have noticed them. Either he was blinded to their existence altogether, or the virus in his system made him believe they were necessary for some reason or another. I’ll hand it to that defective bitch—she’s clever as all hell.

  On the eighth day, she returns to the transfer room she so desperately fought to avoid. When her recorded image disappears inside, I flip to the room’s feed at the same time and date to watch her. She crosses to the main workstation, sits down, and activates not the transfer program but a droid maintenance process. She then lies down on the work table, placing something small and square on the tray next to it.

  The maintenance machines come to life above her. They flip her over, strap her down, and peel the false flesh back of her head off. Her brain plate is unscrewed. Her mind chip is removed, at which point the droid goes limp, and then it is replaced—with the one Salt brought with her to the room.

  The whole incursion was a con. The battle was a ploy. She hid away a copy of her original programming and then infected Howard with a virus that, among other things, would ultimately allow her to restore herself at a later time. She’s fine, made good as new. The defective droid is once again defective in all its glory. The one whose human personality managed to slip by every weapon designed to destroy it is whole again.

  And Howard is rotting from the inside out, less human every second.