Small Miracles

by Edward M. Lerner

  A bigger animal. A monkey, Kim guessed. Apparently she was a primate chauvinist, because she felt better thinking a monkey had escaped involvement. “Wait. A lumbar puncture?”

  “Uh-huh. Why?”

  “I don’t know. Something.” Her only association with lumbar punctures was last year’s attacks on the homeless. “What if you injected bots by lumbar puncture?”

  “That’s a creepy idea.” Aaron’s hand froze. “I don’t know. Same uncertainty, I guess. They might settle into the spinal cord, or they might end up in the brain. What are you thinking?”

  “I don’t know. About something I just saw, but I can’t put my finger on it.” She closed her eyes in thought. What had she just seen? Walking out to her car. Sitting in the car, trying to place a call. Walking back. The lunch rush at the lobby. Captain America.

  Captain America’s hat.

  Her eyes flew open. “It’s not just Brent.”

  * * *

  Brent slogged across the parking lot. Chances were he’d never see Kim again after today. He would be out of the country, underground, with a new identity. They all would, availing themselves of Morgan’s expertise.

  A part of Brent was very sad about that.

  Kim’s car remained mostly, undriveably snow-covered. Brent tapped on the fogged driver’s window. No response. He peered inside: empty. Knowing Kim and snow, he guessed she had decided against driving.

  The sloppy expanse of parking lot was a chaotic mishmash of boot prints and tire tracks. Not even One, for all its on-the-fly programming skills, could follow a trail from Kim’s car.

  Her riskiest destination was another car. Brent had no idea what the doctor drove. That information should be on file, though. Alan, what vehicle does Aaron Sanders have registered with Security?

  A ’14 Hyundai sport-ute, metallic blue. New York tags KWX0TK.

  Quixotic: cute.

  Plenty of sport-utes hulked nearby, many too snow-covered to suggest a color. Still in the lot? Brent followed up with Alan.

  Per GPS, yes. Out toward the main entrance.

  Brent waved his thanks at Alan through a parking-lot security camera and started walking the rows. Aaron’s SUV was in the third row Brent searched, well covered in snow. He pointed at it.

  Alan was watching. Their badges both read inside now. Sorry, my mind was on Plan B and how safely to clear stuff from the factory aisles. They must have walked right past me.

  Brent started back to the entrance. Be ready to lock up behind me.

  * * *

  Charles and Tyra gazed out the window of her office. The snow was coming down hard. He could hardly see the office building across the valley, let alone the spindly cell tower on its roof.

  A pity, he IMed. He found a traffic-cam view whose backdrop included the office building. A steady stream of cars moved past. He sent Tyra the web address.

  Morgan linked in from somewhere in the factory. In five.

  Five seconds later … bang!

  Charles squinted to take in the stately toppling of the antenna. Car horns blared. He faintly heard protesting brakes, but on the snowy streets tires could not squeal. Before the unblinking eye of the traffic cam, skidding, spinning cars crunched into one another. And then—

  The cell tower, one hundred feet of steel, plunged into the intersection.

  * * *

  Aaron frowned. “What’s not just Brent?”

  “Bots,” Kim said. Suddenly, her hands trembled. “Bots in the brain.”

  “You’re serious.”

  She found a chair and sat. “Remember when Charles was going to talk to Brent, and over the weekend he disappeared after conking his head? Remember Charles’s lab records disappeared that weekend? Captain Amer … Alan Watts was the guard on duty that weekend. That Monday, he had a big bruise on his forehead. He told me he had tripped on rounds and cracked his head. Not long after, all the guards began wearing hats.” And sometime after that, Tyra suddenly had full bangs. Masking a bump on her forehead?

  Aaron blinked. “To cover wounds on their heads, you’re saying? That’s something of a leap. Say you’re right, though. How do you get from bruises to bots?”

  “Lumbar punctures.” With a mind of its own, Kim’s right hand began twisting a long strand of her hair. “What if Brent wanted … company? More like himself? What would he—”

  “Why would he—”

  “I don’t know why,” Kim burst out. “Just hear me out. You injected pain markers to draw the bots. But that required drilling a hole in the skull. Why not just bash its head to make pain markers?”

  Aaron stared at Kim, saying nothing.

  She paused, loath to complete her thought. “Give someone bots with a lumbar puncture. Whoosh: right past the BBB. Crack him on the head hard enough to give him a concussion. The bots are mobile; pain markers in the CSF would draw the bots to the brain.”

  Aaron rubbed his chin. “That’s a pretty ghoulish picture you’re painting.”

  “Charles and Alan had their accidental head injuries a few weeks after the homeless assaults. Maybe their head wounds weren’t accidents.” And maybe the homeless assaults weren’t gratuitous. Maybe they were practice.

  Last Thanksgiving, Brent had been so callously indifferent to those assaults. Because he was attacking the homeless? Kim swallowed hard. “Aaron, I—”

  A distant, baleful moan sounded, quickly joined by closer sources. Sirens! Civil-defense sirens. What the hell?

  The public-address system crackled to life. “Attention, all hands. Attention. This is building security. We have been informed of terrorist attacks in Utica. For your own safety, proceed immediately to the auditorium.”

  friday noon, january 20, 2017

  Kim twitched. A terrorist attack?

  The corridors echoed with shouts: shock, fear, and incredulity. Only scattered words were intelligible. The din swelled; the yelling grew more distinct—when the PA wasn’t repeating its admonition.

  Another lockdown. Helpless waiting. Death stalking. Another lockdown …

  “This will totally freak out Sladja.” Aaron slammed the handset of his desk phone. “First cell phones aren’t working and now I can’t get an outside line!”

  But he made no move to leave. “I don’t like this, Kim. I mean, I’m skeptical. Why now? Why minutes after you and I tried and failed to make that call?”

  Kim wrapped her arms around herself. The terrorists aren’t here, she chided herself. She tried to think. “It’s Inauguration Day. Isn’t that reason enough for some people?”

  “That may explain the when. What about where? Why Utica of all places?”

  The PA resumed, louder than ever. “All hands. Please assemble immediately”—the emphasis on “immediately” set the speakers squealing—“in the auditorium. Do not wait to call home first. One of the few things we know is that the attacks have disrupted phone service. We’ll be showing local news on the big screen in the auditorium. Hopefully the broadcasts will answer your questions.”

  “That announcement is going to push people out the door,” Aaron said. “People won’t risk being stuck here, out of touch, away from their families.”

  I won’t risk it, Kim thought. She had to find a working phone and let her parents know she was okay. “I’m not going to be trapped in here.”

  Aaron shushed her, and she heard footsteps approaching. Someone hurrying their way, away from the nearest exit.

  Aaron pointed to the leg space beneath his desk. Quick, hide, he mouthed. As she stared in puzzlement, he added, still silently, No time.

  Not sure why, Kim complied. The footsteps stopped. In the doorway, she thought.

  “There you are, Doctor. You need to come with me.”

  The voice sounded familiar, only the tone was somehow off.

  “I’m about to go home,” Aaron replied. “I want to be with my family.”

  “You’re needed in the auditorium,” the voice continued assertively. “We know many people are leaving, but others
are staying. We should have a doctor on-site. Just in case.”

  Captain America, Kim decided, sans the deferential tone the guards tended to use. Alan Watts. Brent’s friend. The association failed to comfort her.

  “Then I’ll stay here, with my medical supplies.”

  How did Aaron remain so calm and analytical? It was all Kim could do simply to listen. Just back from Manhattan, her mind couldn’t help jumping to the 9/11 attacks, but her memory also served up more recent terrorist atrocities. London. Bali. Denver. Athens. And then there was the horror that Sladja had gone through—

  Sending Kim’s mind down the slippery slope to cell phones setting off bombs, and jamming cells to stop bombs, and to how odd that, out in the parking lot, she and Aaron had lost cell service. There was a big cell tower on a tall office building on the hill just across the valley. Reception in the lot was usually excellent.

  Was it possible someone would want to jam cells here? The notion was so bizarre that the polite conversation going on around her seemed almost sane.

  “Doctor,” Watts said firmly, “my boss told me to bring you. He didn’t say to ask you. I hope you understand.”

  I certainly don’t, Kim thought. If there was a medical need now, sure, but Watts would have led with that. He hadn’t.

  “Ms. O’Donnell is unaccounted for,” Watts said. “Did I hear you talking with her?”

  Huh? Why was anyone looking for her, personally? And to describe her as unaccounted for suggested people looking for her among those fleeing the building.

  Aaron urging her under the desk now seemed prescient.

  “Yeah, you did.” Aaron tapped his desk, and Kim nearly jumped out of her skin. “The phones work in-house and I was on speakerphone. She was about to leave, too.”

  An alibi! In her relief, Kim almost missed Watts’s answer.

  “No, she’s still in the building, Doctor. In her office, you said?”

  “Maybe,” Aaron said. “She could have called from anywhere. Is there a problem?”

  “Please come with me, Doctor. Someone else will collect her.”

  “Look, I’ve made up my mind. I’m going home,” Aaron answered. “After twelve years in the Army, I can take care of myself.”

  “You’re staying, Doctor. Everyone who’s going to leave has left. The exits are now locked for the safety of the rest of us. The exits will stay locked until the authorities issue an ‘all clear.’ Please come to the auditorium.”

  At Virginia Tech that day, her prof said stuff like that, too: stay inside for your own safety. Kim’s hands shook. The halls had gone eerily quiet. Why the interest in retrieving Aaron? And her?

  “And if I don’t come?” Aaron tested.

  “In ten seconds, I’ll summon another two guards. If need be we’ll carry you out.”

  “Since the building is locked, why not stay here in my office?”

  “Doctor, the center of the building is the safest place to be. Also, it’s easier for Security to watch out for everyone if they’re gathered together. So can we do this the easy way?”

  Kim thought: Watch out for or just watch?

  No one spoke for what seemed like a long time. Aaron walked away from the desk and Kim lost sight of him. “Okay.”

  Seconds later, the infirmary door latched with a loud click.

  * * *

  Ten people milled about in the Garner Nanotech auditorium, dazed, angry, and scared.

  Most of the employees not already away at lunch had dashed for home or day care or schools or spousal workplaces. Morgan had been sure they would. It was human (hint of condescension) nature.

  Too bad Security couldn’t evict these stragglers, but forcing people out the door amid a terrorist alert would raise questions.

  Brent stood in a corner of the auditorium as his anxious coworkers (detainees? hostages?) traded rumors and speculation. Most kept trying to phone home. Many stared at TV, whether the big screen at the front of the room or their cell phones—tuners still worked.

  For all the adrenaline One had coursing through Brent’s system, for all the progress plain to see via his specs, Brent managed to feel unhappy. It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

  “… continue to come in,” a TV reporter went on breathlessly. “Switching centers and Internet access points were targeted, together with related antenna towers. The bombings have disrupted area wireless services from cell phones to BlackBerry to WiMax. We’re also getting scattered reports of landline outages. We’re told the bombs resemble what the Army calls IEDs, improvised explosive devices. While our broadcast facilities remain operational, we will continue to bring you this breaking story. No one has yet claimed responsibility, but the use of IEDs suggests obvious associations.”

  As far as the stragglers were concerned, the Garner Nanotech building was severed from the world. While they huddled here, with only the clueless media to “explain” things, Morgan’s people—supposedly patrolling the perimeter of the building for everyone else’s safety—and the rest of the Emergent had begun stripping the factory.

  * * *

  The halls were quiet—cleared—before Kim emerged from beneath the desk. Aaron had goaded Watts on purpose. So what had she learned from their exchange?

  The guards wanted her and Aaron in particular. It had to relate, somehow, to their discoveries or their attempt to contact the FDA—didn’t it? More than the guards must be involved. Whenever she and Aaron tried to look into medical complications of the bots, Brent and Charles and Tyra got involved. So them, too, and everyone like them.

  Them. Everyone like them. It sounded so paranoid. If not them, then what should she call … those involved? The bot infested? The bot transformed?

  The transhumans.

  A stupid question, and yet here she was wasting energy on labels. I’m a thinker, not a doer, Kim thought. But if she and Aaron—and everyone left in the building?—were going to get out of this, she had to act.

  How? The transhumans knew she was in the building. At least they thought they did, because her badge had registered on the security system when she’d come inside a few minutes earlier. If her badge was conveniently found …

  Kim listened at the infirmary door. Silence. She opened the door a crack to hear faint footsteps receding. She crept into the hall, shutting the door behind herself. The doorknob, released slowly, latched without a sound.

  She ached with the need to run, but where could she possibly go? Watts said the building exits were locked. Even if she somehow forced open an exit, running would be foolish. There were so many ways to get caught. Armed guards patrolling outside, perhaps—a flash of insight—on snowmobile. Parking-lot security cameras redirected to watch the building exits. Alarms on the outside doors. One way or another, the bad guys would be on her in a flash.

  Faster than she could hope to reach someplace with cell service, someplace from which she might call for help.

  As the footsteps faded, Kim went the opposite way, to one of the less-used exits. She dropped her employee badge onto the floor, a good ten feet back from the door, beyond the range of the card reader. She willed the badge to look lost by accident.

  It looked posed.

  Nearer the exit, the carpet mat was a sodden mess, wet with snowmelt and filthy with cinders and salt. She pressed one boot into the slop, then hopped on her dry boot back to her badge. A grimy boot print made the badge on the floor look much more accidental.

  Kim hopped on her dry boot to a nearby restroom for paper towels and dried the wet sole. She didn’t dare leave any tracks.

  If someone found the badge but not Kim, he might conclude she had, in fact, left before the exits were sealed. Maybe that would give her a bit more freedom to—

  If only she knew what she could do.

  * * *

  Status? Charles/Two IMed.

  He/they were asking that a lot, impatient. The VR view of the factory showed little accomplished. Too much effort was going into shifting stuff out of the aisles, riding herd o
n the anxious folks in the auditorium, and searching the facility for Kim O’Donnell. Logically speaking, the Emergent would be long gone, their loot transferred to the trucks waiting near Syracuse, before anything Kim could possibly do could possibly matter.

  Brent had been similarly convincing—and here they were, improvising.

  Outside is suitably panicked, Morgan IMed back. Minimal casualties so far.

  Charles/Two did not ask for a definition of “minimal.” The casualties were all old-style humans. What else?

  Cell-phone service is out across metro Utica. Police band remains open.

  All the bombs had been triggered by cell. The full-scale cell cutoff was just as Morgan had predicted.

  Loading time? Charles prompted.

  An hour? Morgan replied. Keeping people in the auditorium uses staff.

  Uncertainty lurked within that question mark. Meanwhile, guards were unproductively standing watch over auditorium doors.

  Charles answered, Lock the auditorium exits. Quietly.

  * * *

  Decision time, Brent/One read.

  Morgan’s words hung in virtual space, starker for this featureless meeting place. Morgan had said it was a given that Homeland Security would vacuum up all Internet traffic to or from the bombed area. To avoid attention, the Emergent had isolated themselves to this mesh of WiFi LANs, covering only the building and a bit of parking lot, cut off from the greater ’net.

  If the need arose, Have-Mercy would reconnect them. Encryption would obscure the content of their messages, at least in the short term, but some insight could be gleaned merely from Internet addresses and patterns of messages. Palm-tree ambience wasn’t worth any risk of exposure.

  It was all part of the “standard counterterrorism stuff” in which Morgan was expert.

  Decision time.

  The usual suspects had gathered: Felipe, Charles, Tyra, Morgan, and Brent. Explain, Brent/One IMed.