Small Miracles

by Edward M. Lerner

  No, Charles replied, and the link went dead again.

  Jerk.

  Having eliminated the obvious places, Brent switched to a systematic search. He cruised the aisles, yawning despite himself, peeking into offices and labs. No luck. He climbed a stack of boxes to survey the factory floor. No luck. He began exploring the main-floor spare-parts storage, in what once was a tanning salon. If Morgan wasn’t here, that would leave only the second floor. The upper level was more an attic than part of the factory, and Brent couldn’t imagine why Morgan would go up there.

  A scuffing sound.

  Brent turned. “Morgan? Is that you?”

  Silence.

  Logically, that shuffling came from somewhere Brent had yet to search. He went deeper into the storage area and his specs went blank. No reception back here. He rounded a badly lit corner into the next corridor. The dimness came as a surprise, but even LED lamps must fail occasionally.

  A slight noise, behind him. Brent spun to see—

  What?

  It was as though the figure materialized from the wall itself.

  * * *

  Kim hugged the shadowy corner near where, standing on a stepladder, she had removed the ceiling-lamp LED. Her body hid a foot-long metal strut she had scavenged from some spare-parts bin. A part for what, she had no idea. As much of her nanosuit as she could see seemed to melt into the walls.

  Counting in her head kept her breathing slow and even, and hopefully silent. All she could do now was wait. And wait.

  And worry.

  Earlier, the depths of this storage area had been dead to WiFi. What if it wasn’t still dead? She couldn’t check because her phone was inaccessible. Because, stupidly, she hadn’t thought to transfer the cell from her slacks pocket to a nanosuit pocket.

  What else had she overlooked? She who thought to ambush a transhuman genius? Kim began to shake.

  Don’t panic! Movement would only make her more visible.

  A few deep, shuddering breaths got her body back under control. She waited and worried some more. And then—

  Someone was moving about the storage area, making no effort to be quiet.

  Kim shuffled her feet to draw that someone’s attention. It eventually worked, because she heard, “Morgan? Is that you?”

  Brent’s voice! He rounded the corner a moment later.

  She launched herself at his back, trying—and failing—not to think. This was Brent. But Brent was the cause of this madness, the leader of these terrorists. But it was Brent.

  He must have heard her. He whirled, the faint ghostly image of herself, arm and club upraised, reflected in his VR specs. He batted aside her arm, and the club flew from her grasp.

  She couldn’t have stopped her charge if she tried. The nanosuit stiffened to distribute the blow, but Kim still felt it. She jerked to a halt, the impact rattling her teeth. Conservation of momentum, she thought inanely.

  Brent ricocheted into a closed metal door. He shook his head groggily.

  She grabbed for Brent’s VR specs, but he twisted his head away. A fist to his gut sent a jolt up her arm and again knocked the wind out of him. He doubled over, retching. This time, she succeeded in grabbing the VR specs and slipped them into a nanosuit pocket.

  One good blow to the head should knock him out, at least long enough to bind him with duct tape. Just knock him out. The lying, the assaults, everything—those were the bots’ doing, not Brent’s.

  Thinking, This is for your own good, Kim hauled back to slug him.

  Brent ducked under the punch and rammed her.

  * * *

  Brent teetered on his feet, stunned, as the stranger grabbed for Brent’s VR specs.

  He twisted his head away, wondering what use the specs were for his assailant. To stop him from calling for help? Maybe the stranger didn’t know there was no reception back here.

  The stranger lunged again for the specs, again reaching with his left hand. This time he almost got them.

  He? The person beating on Brent was short for a man. Whoever it was had the nanosuit Charles was looking for.

  Brent’s thoughts and reactions were so sluggish. What was wrong with him?

  He was an instant too slow in blocking a punch. The stiff fist to his stomach knocked more than the wind out of him. He bent over, puking. This time, the stranger got the VR specs. He or she pulled back a fist for a knockout punch.

  Thinking, She swings like a girl, Brent ducked the roundhouse blow and tackled the stranger. It was move fast or get clobbered, so he had moved fast—and ramming someone in a nanosuit was like running into a wall. He cried out wordlessly—and so did she.

  The pieces finally came together: height, size, left-handedness. Kim!

  * * *

  One peered through Brent’s eyes at an outside world that jerked and spun about. One listened through Brent’s ears to thuds and oofs and gasping synchronized to Brent’s labored breathing. One felt the struggle against lethargy, against the serotonin and melatonin with which it had drenched Brent to keep him drowsy and docile.

  One sensed Brent’s pain.

  He/they needed help, and there was no way to summon it. One was left with sorting through the torrent of impressions and feelings.

  A shock of recognition! Associations flared in Brent’s memory—the assailant was Kim! Brent’s conflict and confusion swelled. His focus wavered.

  Brent’s sentimentality would doom them both.

  One flooded Brent’s system with adrenaline and kept it coming. Through the visual cortex and at the most visceral levels, One screamed.

  Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill.…

  * * *

  Sudden rage consumed Brent. In an instant, his lethargy vanished. He brimmed with new energy.

  How dare Kim attack him? Taking her by the throat, he shook her like a rag doll.

  Her fists hammered him, but he ignored them. As she tried to knee him, he turned away, taking the blow on his thigh. The nanosuit was stiff beneath his fingers and he knew he couldn’t strangle her—but he could shake her senseless.

  “Brent,” she wheezed. “Stop.”

  He kept shaking her. The wall or the hardened back of the suit: cracking her head against either would work equally well. Every time she managed to push away from the wall was another opportunity to crash her into the wall again.

  But something was wrong. This was wrong. Wasn’t it?

  Brent fought the rage. What was he doing? Why was he doing it? He could let her go, and if need be run after her. Even if he hadn’t beaten her almost senseless, Kim never could run as fast as him.

  The lust to kill would not be denied.

  His whole body was trembling now. His heart pounded, faster and faster. He felt like he was on fire.

  His muscles bunched up, as though he was fighting himself. Because he was!

  “Brent,” she wheezed again. “This … has to … stop.”

  He slammed Kim’s head into the wall. He? No, the rage. No, One slammed her head.

  Stop! Brent projected. He tried to release Kim, but his hands seemed frozen. He struggled for control. Let her go.

  Apparently he more than projected. “It’s not you,” Kim gasped. “It’s … the bots. Fight them.”

  Aaron Sanders had said much the same. Could that have been only an hour or so earlier? It seemed a lifetime.

  All Brent had to do was simply let go. Run from the storeroom maze and call out for help. With another person or two, he could easily overpower Kim without further harming her.

  One did not care. One had no pity for mere humans.

  Screw you, Brent projected. He willed his body to go limp. It didn’t. He tried again, this time focusing on his hands, and was rewarded by spastic tremors. He tried again.…

  * * *

  The shaking went on and on, punctuated by crashes into the wall. Kim struggled to stay conscious. The back of her head must be one large bruise and she was seeing double. She was talking, in gasps and wheezes and croaks, with no clue
what she was saying.

  She was going to die here.

  The shaking slowed, changed. Brent’s muscles quivered and bunched. His eyes fluttered open and shut and open again. He was fighting—himself.

  From reserves Kim did not know she had, she summoned the strength for one more attempt to break free. One more blow was all that she had left in her. It had to do. When Brent’s head next came near, Kim smashed her head as hard as she could into his forehead.

  They crashed, side by side, to the floor.

  friday, 2:30 P.M., january 20, 2017

  All set, Morgan IMed. On my way back.

  The addendum was redundant, Charles thought, since reentering the local mesh of WiFi hotspots implied as much. Morgan brought valuable tactical knowledge, but he was hardly in Charles’s mental league. Then again, who was?

  Did Brent bother you? Charles asked.

  Morgan: No. Did you send him my way?

  Hardly. Brent’s divided loyalties had already driven the Emergent to improvisation. Why give Brent another excuse to go weak in the knees? He mentioned looking for you.

  Seconds later, Morgan loped onto the loading dock, winding through the choreographed chaos to Charles. “If Brent’s not here, preparing to leave, and he didn’t find me, where is he?”

  A good question. Nowhere online. Who sees Brent? Charles IMed to everyone.

  No one. A quick poll showed no one had seen Brent for almost thirty minutes. That was more than ample time to have found Morgan.

  Morgan muttered under his breath. “At least we know he’s inside. We’d have gotten an alarm from any door opened or window broken.”

  Brent was hiding, Charles decided. To what purpose? His misplaced conscience must be at work again. “Brent knows too much. We shouldn’t leave him behind to talk.”

  “Concur.” Morgan added Charles to a Security group link. Watts, Corbett, Donaldson: Split up and find Brent Cleary. Bring him to the dock. But nanosuit up first. Cleary may resist.

  Charles gestured at the activity around them. “Everything important is crated. Much of it is loaded. I say we forego the secondary equipment and begin leaving now.”

  Because leaving would take time. They had to go one vehicle at a time, spaced minutes apart. This wasn’t the day, not with the cops scurrying about, to assemble an obvious convoy.

  Charles linked to Felipe and Tyra, supervising on the other end of the loading dock: Ready to go?

  Both agreed.

  Their first loaded SUV was on the road faster than the search team could put on their nanosuits and begin the building sweep.

  * * *

  His head spinning, nauseous, Brent woke up. He felt like one large bruise. He felt burned out. The skin across his forehead was painfully taut, as though with a massive bump. He went to probe it gently and—

  His hands were behind him, tied around a post. He remembered an ambush, a fight—and Kim!

  Time to take stock. He was seated on a hard tile floor, legs stretching out in front of him, ankles bound together with lots of duct tape. He wiggled his arms and felt tape around his wrists. Wet paper towels, most bloody, lay scattered near his feet. His shirt, sopping wet, clung to him.

  With great insult to his neck Brent managed to see, out of the corner of an eye, a post rising above him. The glimpse confirmed what touch had already suggested. He was lashed to a metal lally post. It would be anchored to floor and ceiling. He wouldn’t be going anywhere.

  So where was here?

  Heavy metal shelving units all around said storeroom, and nothing he recognized on the dusty shelves would have been out of place at Garner Nanotech. Almost certainly, he was in the storeroom complex he had been searching when Kim attacked.

  You won, One wrote across Brent’s field of vision. The message was inflectionless, of course, but he read sarcasm into it.

  Presumably Kim had dragged him here, unconscious, and tied him up. Not even One could see through closed eyelids, so Brent had to settle for the inference. And no matter what One now tried, Brent could not, bound like this, harm anyone.

  Good: He was done hurting people. He hoped.

  He heard soft footsteps, and then someone in a nanosuit entered the room with a coffee carafe sloshing with water. The fabric was set to a wall-paint yellow; it stood out like a beacon against parts-laden shelves. The figure threw back its hood.

  It was Kim. Her face was mottled and inflamed, in the early stages of bruising. Crusted blood ringed her nostrils, and she had a bump on her forehead to rival the one Brent sensed on his own. “You look like a piñata,” he blurted. And I’m the one who whacked you.

  “Trust me,” Kim said, “you look worse.” She took a wad of paper towels from a nanosuit pocket, dipped a towel into the carafe, and mopped his forehead. “How do you feel?”

  Utterly drained. The wet, cool towel felt good. “I’ve been better. Why am I wet?”

  She sat gingerly on a shop vac, looking very sad. “You went berserk, Brent. What do you remember?”

  “Being berserk. A head butt.” And Kim, thank you for that. No matter what One might later do to his memory and hormones, Brent could never have lived with killing her.

  She nodded. “I know it wasn’t you doing it, but something in you. I can’t untie you.”

  “I didn’t ask.” Because he was still afraid of what One could make him do, and that he might not be able to resist the next time. “So why am I wet?”

  The wet towel was still in her hands and she twisted it nervously. “There you were raving, eyes wide, shaking the hell out of me. So: head butt. I blacked out, came to on the floor.

  “There you were, thrashing and flushed. Your pulse was racing. Even through a glove you felt feverish. On fire. So after I secured you”—she looked away, a little guiltily—“I got water. I’ve been trying to cool you down since.”

  “Excited delirium,” Brent said. “Few doctors will say unequivocally the condition exists. Any cop will.” And several had, at Riley’s pub.

  To One, Brent projected, You almost killed us both. Brent got the impression One would forego hormonal manipulation for a while—at least until his/their body could safely handle more.

  “Excited delirium?” Kim prompted.

  “That’s what cops call it when someone is so high on drugs—and the drug can be an adrenaline overdose—that it takes a bunch of people to subdue him.” The second-guessers called it police brutality, especially when the perp had a massive heart attack right after. “It can be fatal if the heart rate and body temperature cycle out of control.”

  Kim looked perplexed. “But why?”

  “You mean, am I on drugs? In a way. The thing is, Kim, you had it right. My brain has a mind of its own, and it wouldn’t let you stop me. So it flooded me with adrenaline. When that wasn’t enough, it gave me more adrenaline, and some more, and some more after that.”

  “Because you wouldn’t let it control you,” she said firmly.

  Maybe so, but he didn’t comment. He had enough else on his conscience not to take credit for one brief success. “By knocking me out and cooling me down, you almost certainly saved my life.”

  Brent wasn’t sure she had done him a favor.

  * * *

  Sensing Brent’s depression, Kim changed the subject. “One of the—what do you call yourselves?—called us, called humans, Neanderthals. That’ll be the way of it, won’t it, Brent? You’re stealing enough bots to transform millions, and factory gear to make more. I saw the bot-assembly vats being removed. My kind will be outcompeted and, after a while, extinct.”

  “Emergent. That’s what we call ourselves. When did you hear this?”

  “Not important, Brent. How do I stop this?”

  He said nothing, and she imagined a line had been drawn. He wouldn’t fight her—to the extent he could control his inner demon—but neither would he help her. His loyalties did not lie with … Neanderthals.

  Well, damn it, she was going to stop this. Somehow.

  Kim waggled
in his face the VR specs she had managed to take from him. “I hoped these would give me a better idea what’s going on. I figure that you … Emergent … use the glasses for comm among yourselves. Any active sessions must have timed out while I was passed out.” She rubbed her bruised forehead, hoping to lay on some guilt. “What’s the log-in info?”

  He didn’t comment.

  “I need that ID and password, Brent.”

  “No you don’t, Kim. You’re lucky the specs did time out. Among us, IMing is damn near like telepathy. My companions would have known in a flash if a stranger was on the link.”

  “I might have learned something useful,” she said obstinately. She was outnumbered, unarmed, and—by Emergent standards—probably half-witted. She needed an advantage, and a peek at their plans could be it. “Tell me how to get on the link.”

  “And if they caught you immediately after? It’d be simple to triangulate your position from WiFi routers.”

  That was BS. “I know how WiFi works. There isn’t a triangulation algorithm involved.”

  “My nose itches,” he said. “Scratch it?”

  She did, and it was an eerily human moment.

  “Thanks. Okay, about triangulation. You’re right—for standard router software. It’d take me about two minutes to patch the routers to make that kind of search. Have-Mercy would be faster. If anyone senses a stranger on the link, you can be sure they’d make the upgrade.”

  Merry was a hell of a programmer before. Yeah, she probably could hack the WiFi routers to improvise a locater.

  Kim’s spirits, already low, sank further. Her sorry excuse for a plan—steal a nanosuit, capture some VR specs, find and exploit a weakness—had just collapsed of its own weight.

  What the hell was she going to try now?

  * * *

  Just maybe, if Kim stayed out of sight for a little while longer, the others would leave and she would be safe.

  Lashed to this post, Brent had only his wits and words to keep her here. So he asked what she had been up to. He asked what she knew, and what she intended. He hinted at her suspicions and speculations, about the concerns he had denied or obfuscated for months. As he knew Kim so well, it was easy to divert her into irrelevant detail.